•       / 

.  ] ;  A 


-Couch 


By  Sir  Arthur  Quitter-Couch 

On  the  Art  of  Writing 
On  the  Art  of  Reading 
Studies  in  Literature 

(first  series) 

Studies  in  Literature 

(second  series) 


Studies   in   Literature 


By 

Sir  Arthur  Quiller-Gouch,  M.A. 

Fellow  of  Jesus  College 

King  Edward  VII  Professor  of  English  Literature 
in  the  University  of  Cambridge 


First  Series 


New  York:  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 
Cambridge,  England:  University  Press 


First  Printing,  December  1918 
Second  Printing,  December  1922 


Made  in  the  United  States  of  America 


PREFACE 

'"PHE  first  of  these  '  studies, '  The  Commerce  of  Thought, 
^  was  originally  read  before  an  audience  at  the 
Royal  Institution  of  London.  Coleridge  and  Matthew 
Arnold  have  appeared  as  Introductions  in  'The  World's 
Classics'  series,  and  I  thank  the  Oxford  University 
Press  for  allowing  me  to  reprint  them.  Swinburne  was 
written  for  'The  Edinburgh  Review,'  and  Charles 
Reade  for  'The  Times  Literary  Supplement'  on  the 
centenary  of  Reade's  birth. 

I  cannot  quarrel  with  any  critic  who  may  find  the 
word  'studies'  too  important  for  a  volume  which  con- 
sists, in  the  main,  of  familiar  discourses:  and  will  only 
plead  that  it  was  chosen  to  cover  not  this  book  alone 
but  a  successor  of  which  some  part  of  the  contents  may 
better  justify  the  general  title.  For  example,  in  the  lec- 
ture here  printed  On  the  Terms  'Classical'  and  'Ro- 
mantic' I  purposely  contented  myself  with  discussing 
some  elementary  and  (as  I  believe)  mistaken  notions, 
reserving  some  interesting  modern  theories  for  later 
treatment. 

I  must  here,  however,  avow  my  belief  that  before 
starting  to  lay  down  principles  of  literature  or  aesthetic 
a  man  should  offer  some  evidence  of  his  capacity  to 
enjoy  the  better  and  eschew  the  worse.  The  claim, 
for  the  moment  fashionable,  that  a  general  philoso- 
phy of  aesthetic  can  be  constructed  by  a  thinker  who, 

iii 


2037805 


iv  Preface 

in  practice,  cannot  distinguish  Virgil  from  Bavius,  or 
Rodin  from  William  Dent  Pitman,  seems  to  me  to  pre- 
sume a  credulity  almost  beyond  the  dreams  of  illicit 
therapeutics.  By  'poetry, '  in  these  pages,  I  mean 
what  has  been  written  by  Homer,  Dante,  Shakespeare 
and  some  others. 

ARTHUR  QUILLER-COUCH 

May  10,  1918. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

THE  COMMERCE  OF  THOUGHT  i 

BALLADS .23 

THE  HORATIAN  MODEL  IN  ENGLISH  VERSE     .  .       51 

ON  THE  TERMS  "CLASSICAL"  AND  "ROMANTIC"  .       76 

SOME  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY  POETS 

I.  JOHN  DONNE 96 

II.  HERBERT  AND  VAUGHAN      .         .         .         .118 

III.  TRAHERNE,  CRASHAW  AND  OTHERS          .         .     146 

THE  POETRY  OF  GEORGE  MEREDITH      .         .         .168 

THE  POETRY  OF  THOMAS  HARDY  .         .         .         .189 

COLERIDGE 212 

MATTHEW  ARNOLD         .         .         .         .         .  231 

SWINBURNE  ........     246 

CHARLES  READE 274 

PATRIOTISM  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  I  .  .  .  289 
PATRIOTISM  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,  II  .  .  306 
INDEX 321 


THE  COMMERCE  OF  THOUGHT 


A  MONG  the  fascinating  books  that  have  never  been 
•**•  written  (and  they  are  still  the  most  fascinating  of 
all)  I  think  my  favourite  is  Professor  So-and-So's  History 
of  Trade-Routes  from  the  Earliest  Times,  a  magnificent 
treatise,  incomplete  in  three  volumes.  The  title  may 
not  allure  you ;  possibly  you  suspect  it  of  promising  as 
much  dullness  as  the  title  of  this  lecture,  and  it  is  even 
conceivable  that  you  secretly  extend  your  mistrust  to 
professors  as  a  class.  Well,  concerning  us,  as  men,  you 
may  be  right:  the  accusation  has  been  levelled:  but  I 
shall  try  to  persuade  you  that  you  are  mistaken  about 
this  book. 

For  a  few  examples — Who,  hearing  that  British 
oysters,  from  Richborough,  were  served  at  Roman 
dinner-parties  under  the  Empire,  does  not  want  to  know 
how  that  long  journey  was  contrived  for  them  and  how 
they  were  kept  alive  on  the  road?  Or  take  the  secret 
of  the  famous  purple  that  was  used  to  dye  the  Emper- 
or's robe.  As  Browning  asked,  "Who  fished  the  murex 
up?"  How  did  it  reach  the  dyeing-vat?  What  was 
the  process?  Was  the  trade  a  monopoly?  Again,  you 
remember  that  navy  of  Tarshish,  which  came  once  in 
three  years  bringing  Solomon  gold  and  silver,  ivory  and 
apes  and  peacocks.  Who  would  not  wish  to  read  one 


2  Studies  in  Literature 

of  its  bills  of  lading,  to  construct  a  picture  of  the  quays 
as  the  vessels  freighted  or  discharged  their  cargo?  As 
who  would  not  eagerly  read  a  description  of  that 
lumberer's  camp  on  Lebanon  to  which  Solomon  sent 
ten  thousand  men  a  month  by  courses:  "a  month  they 
were  in  Lebanon  and  two  months  at  home,  and  Adoni- 
ram  was  over  the  levy"?  The  conditions,  you  see, 
must  have  been  hard,  as  the  corvee  was  enormous.  What 
truth,  if  any,  underlies  the  legend  that  when  Solomon 
died  they  embalmed  and  robed  him  and  stood  the  corpse 
high  on  the  unfinished  wall  that,  under  their  great  task- 
master's eye,  the  workmen  should  work  and  not ' '  slack  " 
(as  we  say)  ?  What  a  clerk-of-the-works ! 

Yet  again — Where  lay  the  famous  tin-islands,  the 
Cassiterides?  How  were  the  great  ingots  of  Cornish 
tin  delivered  down  to  the  coast  and  shipped  on  to  Mar- 
seilles, Carthage,  Tyre?  We  know  that  they  were 
shaped  pannier-wise,  and  carried  by  ponies.  But 
where  was  the  island  of  Ictis,  where  the  ships  received 
them?  Our  latest  theorists  will  not  allow  it  to  have 
been  St.  Michael's  Mount — the  nearest  of  all,  and  the 
most  obviously  correspondent  with  the  historian's 
description.  They  tell  us  hardily  it  was  the  Isle  of 
Wight — or  the  Isle  of  Thanet.  Ah,  if  these  professors 
did  not  suffer  from  sea-sickness,  how  much  simpler 
their  hypotheses  would  be!  Image  the  old  Cornish 
merchant  taking  whole  trains  of  ponies,  laden  with 
valuable  ore,  along  the  entire  south  of  England,  through 
dense  forests  and  marauding  tribes,  to  ship  his  ware  at 
Thanet,  when  he  had  half  a  dozen  better  ports  at  his 
door!  Imagine  a  skipper  from  Marseilles — But  the 
absurdities  are  endless,  and  I  will  not  here  pursue  them. 

For  what  other  hidden  port  of  trade  was  that  Phoe- 
nician skipper  bound  who,  held  in  chase  off  the  Land's 


The  Commerce  of  Thought  3 

End  by  a  Roman  galley  and  desperate  of  cheating  her, 
deliberately  (tradition  tells)  drove  his  ship  ashore  to 
save  his  merchant's  secret?  Through  what  phases,  be- 
fore this,  had  run  and  shifted  the  commercial  struggle 
between  young  Greece  and  ancient  Phoenicia  imaged 
for  us  in  Matthew  Arnold's  famous  simile: 

As  some  grave  Tyrian  trader,  from  the  sea, 

Descried  at  sunrise  an  emerging  prow 
Lifting  the  cool-hair'd  creepers  stealthily, 

The  fringes  of  a  southward-facing  brow 

Among  the  ^Egean  isles: 
And  saw  the  merry  Grecian  coaster  come, 

Freighted  with  amber  grapes,  and  Chian  wine, 

Green  bursting  figs,  and  tunnies  steep'd  in  brine; 
And  knew  the  intruders  on  his  ancient  home, 

The  young  light-hearted  masters  of  the  waves; 

And  snatch'd  his  rudder,  and  shook  out  more  sail, 

And  day  and  night  held  on  indignantly 
O'er  the  blue  Midland  waters  with  the  gale, 
Betwixt  the  Syrtes  and  soft  Sicily, 

To  where  the  Atlantic  raves 
Outside  the  Western  Straits,  and  unbent  sails 

There,  where  down  cloudy  cliffs,  through  sheets  of  foam, 
Shy  traffickers,  the  dark  Iberians  come; 
And  on  the  beach  undid  his  corded  bales. 

What  commerce  followed  the  cutting  of  Rome's  great 
military  roads? — that  tremendous  one,  for  instance, 
hewn  along  the  cliffs  close  over  the  rapids  that  swirl 
through  the  Iron  Gates  of  Danube.  By  what  caravan 
tracks,  through  what  depots,  did  the  great  slave  traffic 
wind  up  out  of  Africa  and  reach  the  mart  at  Constanti- 
nople ?  WTiat  sort  of  men  worked  goods  down  the  Rhone 


4  Studies  in  Literature 

valley;  and,  if  by  water,  by  what  contrivances?  To 
come  a  little  later,  how  did  the  Crusaders  handle  trans- 
port and  commissariat?  Through  and  along  what  line 
of  entrepots  did  Venice,  Genoa,  Seville  ply  their  immense 
ventures?  Who  planted  the  vineyards  of  Bordeaux, 
Madeira,  the  Rhine-land,  and  from  what  stocks? 
Who,  and  what  sort  of  man,  opened  an  aloe  market 
in  Socotra?  Why,  and  on  what  instance,  and  how, 
did  England  and  Flanders  come  to  supply  Europe, 
the  one  with  wool,  the  other  with  fine  linen  and 
naperies? 

Now  of  these  and  like  questions — for  of  course  I  might 
multiply  them  by  the  hundred — I  wish,  first  of  all,  to 
impress  on  you  that  they  are  of  first  importance  if  you 
would  understand  history;  by  which  I  mean,  if  you 
would  take  hold,  in  imagination,  of  the  human  motives 
which  make  history.  Roughly  (but,  of  course,  very 
roughly)  you  may  say  of  man  that  his  wars  and  main 
migrations  on  this  planet  are  ruled  by  the  two  great 
appetites  which  rule  the  strifes  and  migrations  of  the 
lower  animals — love,  and  hunger.  If  under  love  we 
include  the  parental  instinct  in  man  to  do  his  best  for  his 
mate  and  children  (which  includes  feeding  them,  and 
later  includes  patrimonies  and  marriage  portions)  you 
get  love  and  hunger  combined,  and  doubled  in  driving 
power.  Man,  unlike  the  brutes,  will  also  war  for 
religion  (I  do  not  forget  the  Moslem  invasion  or  the 
Crusades)  and  emigrate  for  religion  (I  do  not  forget  the 
Pilgrim  Fathers) :  but,  here  again,  when  a  man  expatri- 
ates himself  for  religion  the  old  motives  at  least  "come 
in. "  The  immediate  cause  of  his  sailing  for  America 
is  that  authority,  finding  him  obnoxious  at  home, 
makes  the  satisfaction  of  hunger,  love  and  the 
parental  instincts  impossible  for  him  save  on  con- 


The  Commerce  of  Thought  5 

dition  of  renouncing  his  faith,  which  he  will  not  do. 

Neither  do  I  forget — indeed  it  will  be  my  business, 
before  I  have  done,  to  remind  you — that  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  men  have  left  home  and  country  for  the 
sake  of  learning.  There  lies  the  origin  of  the  great 
universities.  But  here  again  you  will  find  it  hard  to 
separate — at  all  events  from  the  thirteenth  century 
onward — the  pure  ardour  of  scholarship  from  the 
worldly  advancement  to  which  it  led.  Further,  while 
men  may  migrate  for  the  sake  of  learning  I  do  not 
remember  to  have  heard  of  their  making  war  for  it. 
On  this  point  they  content  themselves  with  calling  one 
another  names. 

To  cut  this  part  of  the  argument  short — Of  all  the 
men  you  have  known  who  went  out  to  the  Colonies, 
did  not  nine  out  of  ten  go  to  make  money?  Of  all 
the  women,  did  not  nine  out  of  ten  go  to  marry, 
or  to  "better  themselves"  by  some  less  ambiguous 
process? 

We  are  used  to  think  of  Marathon  as  a  great  victory 
won  by  a  small  enlightened  Greek  race  over  dense 
hordes  of  the  obscurantist  East;  of  Thermopylae  as  a 
pass  held  by  the  free  mind  of  man  against  its  would-be 
enslavers.  But  Herodotus  does  not  see  it  so.  Herodo- 
tus handles  the  whole  quarrel  as  started  and  balanced 
on  a  trade  dispute.  Which  was  it  first — East  or  West — 
that,  coming  in  the  way  of  trade,  broke  the  rules  of  the 
game  by  stealing  away  a  woman  ?  Was  lo  that  woman  ? 
Or  was  Europa?  Jason  sails  to  Colchis  and  carries  off 
Medea,  with  the  gold :  Paris  sails  to  Sparta  and  abducts 
Helen — both  ladies  consenting.  Always  at  the  root 
of  the  story,  as  Herodotus  tells  it,  we  find  commerce, 
coast-wise  trading,  the  game  of  marriage  by  capture: 
no  silly  notions  about  liberty,  nationality,  religion  or 


6  Studies  in  Literature 

the  human  intellect.  It  is  open  to  us,  of  course,  to 
believe  that  Troy  was  besieged  for  ten  years  for  the  sake 
of  a  woman,  as  it  is  pleasant  to  read  in  Homer  of  Helen 
watching  the  battlefield  from  the  tower  above  the 
Skaian  gates,  while  the  old  men  of  the  city  marvel  at  her 
beauty,  saying  one  to  another,  "Small  blame  is  it  that 
for  such  a  woman  the  Trojans  and  Achaeans  should 
long  suffer  hardships."  But  if  you  ask  me,  do  I  believe 
that  the  Trojan  War  happened  so,  I  am  constrained  to 
answer  that  I  do  not :  I  suspect  there  was  money  in  it 
somewhere.  There  is  a  legend — I  think  in  Suetonius, 
who  to  be  sure  had  a  nasty  mind — that  Caesar  first 
invaded  Britain  for  the  sake  of  its  pearls;  a  disease 
of  which  our  oysters  have  creditably  rid  themselves. 
And  even  nowadays,  when  we  happen  to  be  fighting 
far  abroad  and  our  statesmen  assure  us  that  "we  seek 
no  goldfields, "  one  murmurs  the  advice  of  Tennyson's 
Northern  Farmer 

Doant  them  marry  for  mutiny,  but  goa  wheer  munny  is. 

Money?  Yes:  but  let  your  imagination  play  on 
these  old  trade-routes,  and  you  will  not  only  enhance 
your  hold  on  the  true  springs  of  history;  you  will 
wonderfully  seize  the  romance  of  it.  You  will  see,  as 
this  little  planet  revolves  back  out  of  the  shadow  of 
night  to  meet  the  day,  little  threads  pushing  out  over 
its  black  spaces — dotted  ships  on  wide  seas,  crawling 
trains  of  emigrant  waggons,  pioneers,  tribes  on  the 
trek,  men  extinguishing  their  camp-fires  and  shoulder- 
ing their  baggage  for  another  day's  march  or  piling  it 
into  canoes  by  untracked  river  sides,  families  loading 
their  camels  with  figs  and  dates  for  Smyrna,  villagers 
treading  wine-vats,  fishermen  hauling  nets,  olive- 


The  Commerce  of  Thought  7 

gatherers,  packers,  waggoners,  long  trains  of  African 
porters,  desert  caravans  with  armed  outriders,  daha- 
beeyahs  pushing  up  the  Nile,  busy  rice-fields,  puffs  of 
smoke  where  the  expresses  run  across  Siberia,  Canada, 
or  northward  from  Capetown,  Greenland  whalers, 
Newfoundland  codfishers,  trappers  around  Hudson's 
Bay.  .  .  . 

The  main  puzzle  with  these  trade-routes  is  that  while 
seas  and  rivers  and  river  valleys  last  for  ever,  and  roads 
for  long,  and  even  a  railroad  long  enough  to  be  called  a 
"permanent  way,"  the  traffic  along  them  is  often 
curiously  evanescent.  Let  me  give  you  a  couple  of 
instances,  one  in  quite  recent  times,  the  other  of  today, 
passing  under  our  eyes. 

A  man  invents  a  steam-engine.  It  promptly  makes 
obsolete  the  stage-coaches,  whose  pace  was  the  glory 
of  England.  Famous  hostelries  along  the  Great  North 
Road  put  up  their  shutters;  weeds  begin  to  choke  the 
canals;  a  whole  nexus  of  national  traffic  is  torn  in  shreds, 
dissipated.  A  few  years  pass,  and  somebody  invents 
the  motor-car — locomotion  by  petrol.  Forthwith  pro- 
sperity flows  back  along  the  old  highways.  County 
Councils  start  re-metalling,  tar-spraying;  inns  revive 
under  new  custom:  and  your  rich  man  is  swept  past 
a  queer  wayside  building,  without  ever  a  thought  that 
here  stood  a  turnpike  gate  which  Dick  Turpin  had  to 
leap. 

For  a  second  change,  which  I  have  watched  for  a  year 
or  two  as  it  has  passed  under  my  own  eyes  at  the  foot 
of  my  garden  at  home. — As  you  know,  the  trade  of 
Europe  from  the  West  Coast  of  America  around  the 
Horn  is  carried  by  large  sailing-vessels  (the  passage 
being  too  long  for  steamships  without  coaling  stations). 
One  day  America  starts  in  earnest  to  cut  the  Panama 


8  Studies  in  Literature 

canal.  Forthwith  the  provident  British  shipowner 
begins  to  get  quit  of  these  sailing-vessels:  noble  three- 
and  four-masters,  almost  all  Clyde-built.  He  sells 
them  to  Italian  firms.  Why  to  Italian  firms  ?  Because 
these  ships  have  considerable  draught  and  are  built  of 
iron.  Their  draught  unfits  them  for  general  coasting 
trade;  they  could  not  begin  to  navigate  the  Baltic,  for 
instance.  Now  Italy  has  deep-water  harbours.  But 
the  Genoese  firms  (I  am  told)  buy  these  ships  for  the 
second  reason,  that  they  are  of  iron :  because  while  the 
Italian  Government  lays  a  crippling  duty  on  ordinary 
iron,  broken-up  ship-iron  may  enter  free.  So,  after  a 
coastwise  voyage  or  two,  it  pays  to  rip  their  plates  out, 
pass  them  under  the  rollers  and  re-issue  them  for  new 
iron;  and  thus  for  a  few  months  these  beautiful  things 
that  used  to  wing  it  home,  five  months  without  sighting 
land,  and  anchor  under  my  garden,  eke  out  a  new  brief 
traffic  until  the  last  of  them  shall  be  towed  to  the 
breakers'  yard.  Even  in  such  unnoted  ways  grew, 
thrived,  passed,  died,  the  commercial  glories  of  Venice, 
Spain,  Holland. 

II 

Now  I  will  ask  you  to  consider  something  more 
transient,  more  secret  in  operation,  than  ways  of  trade 
and  barter — the  ways  in  which  plants  disseminate  them- 
selves or  are  spread  and  acclimatised.  For  my  pupils  in 
Cambridge,  the  other  day,  I  drew,  as  well  as  I  could,  in 
the  New  Lecture  Theatre,  the  picture  of  an  old  Roman 
colonist  in  his  villa  in  Britain,  let  us  say  in  the  fourth 
century — and  you  must  remember  that  these  Roman 
colonists  inhabited  Britain  for  a  good  four  hundred 
years.  Let  me  quote  one  short  passage  from  that 
description: 


The  Commerce  of  Thought  9 

The  owner  of  the  villa  (you  may  conceive)  is  the  grand- 
son or  even  great-great-grandson  of  the  colonist  who  first 
built  it,  following  in  the  wake  of  the  legionaries.  The 
family  has  prospered,  and  our  man  is  now  a  considerable 
landowner.  He  was  born  in  Britain ;  his  children  have  been 
born  here;  and  here  he  lives  a  comfortable,  well-to-do,  out- 
of-door  life,  in  its  essentials  I  fancy  not  so  very  unlike  the 
life  of  an  English  country  squire  today.  Instead  of  chasing 
hares  and  foxes  he  hunts  the  wolf  and  the  wild  boar;  but  the 
sport  is  good,  and  he  returns  with  an  appetite.  He  has 
added  a  summer  parlour  to  the  house,  with  a  northern  aspect 
and  no  heating  flues ;  for  the  old  parlour  he  has  enlarged  the 
praefurnium,  and  through  the  long  winter  evenings  sits 
far  better  warmed  than  many  a  master  of  a  modern  country 
house.  A  belt  of  trees  on  the  brow  of  the  rise  protects  him 
from  the  worst  winds,  and  to  the  south  his  daughters  have 
planted  violet-beds  which  will  breathe  odorously  in  the 
spring.  He  has  rebuilt  and  enlarged  the  slave  quarters  and 
some  of  the  outhouses,  replaced  the  stucco  pillars  around 
the  atrium  with  a  colonnade  of  polished  stone,  and,  where 
stucco  remains,  has  repainted  it  in  fresh  colours.  He  knows 
that  there  are  no  gaps  or  weak  spots  in  his  stockade  fence — 
wood  is  always  cheap.  In  a  word,  he  has  improved  his  estate, 
is  modestly  proud  of  it;  and  will  be  content,  like  the  old 
Athenian,  to  leave  his  patrimony  not  worse  but  something 
better  than  he  found  it. 

Such  a  family — it  was  part  of  my  picture — would  get 
many  parcels  from  the  land  they  still  called  "home," 
from  the  adored  City — urbe  quam  dicunt  Romam — The 
City;  parcels  fetched  from  the  near  military  station  on 
the  great  road  where  the  imperial  writ  ran ;  parcels  for- 
warded by  those  trade-routes  of  which  I  have  spoken; 
parcels  of  books — scrolls,  rather,  or  tablets;  parcels  of 
seeds — useful  vegetables  or  pot-herbs,  garden  flowers, 
fruit -plants  for  the  orchard,  for  the  colonnade  even  roses 


io  Studies  in  Literature 

with  real  Italian  earth  damp  about  their  roots.  For  the 
Romans  here  were  great  acclimatisers,  and  upon  Italy 
they  could  draw  as  a  nursery  into  which  the  best  fruits, 
trees,  flowers  of  the  world  had  been  gathered  after  con- 
quest and  domesticated. 

For  beasts,  it  seems  probable  that  they  introduced  the 
ass — with  the  mule  as  a  consequence,  the  goat,  certain 
new  breeds  of  oxen;  for  birds,  the  peacock  from  India  or 
Persia,  the  pheasant  from  Colchis,  the  Numidian  guinea- 
fowl  (as  we  call  it),  the  duck,  the  goose  (defender  of  the 
Capitol),  possibly  the  dove  and  the  falcon.  But  we  talk 
of  plants.  Britain  swarmed  with  oak  and  beech,  as  with 
most  of  the  trees  of  Gaul ;  but  the  Roman  brought  the 
small-leaved  elm,  ilex,  cypress,  laurel,  myrtle,  oriental 
plane,  walnut ;  of  fruits  (among  others)  peach,  apricot, 
cherry,  probably  the  filbert;  of  vegetables,  green  peas 
(bless  him!),  cucumbers,  onions,  leeks;  of  flowers,  some 
species  of  the  rose  (the  China-rose,  as  we  call  it,  for 
one),  lilies,  hyacinths,  sweet-williams,  lilacs,  tulips. 

But  these  were  plants  deliberately  imported  and 
tended.  What  of  wild-flowers — the  common  blue 
speedwell,  for  instance?  I  am  not  botanist  enough  to 
say  if  the  speedwell  was  indigenous  in  Britain :  but,  as  a 
gardener  in  a  small  way,  I  know  how  it  can  travel! 
If  the  speedwell  will  not  do,  take  some  other  seed  that 
has  lodged  on  his  long  tramp  northward  in  the  boot- 
sole  of  a  common  soldier  in  Vespasian's  legion.  The 
boot  reaches  Dover,  plods  on,  wears  out,  is  cast  by  the 
way,  rots  in  a  ditch.  From  it,  next  spring,  Britain  has 
gained  a  new  flower. 

Ill 

I  come  now  to  something  more  volatile,  more  fuga- 
cious yet — more  secret  and  subtle  and  mysterious  in 


The  Commerce  of  Thought  n 

operation  even  than  the  vagaries  of  seeds;  I  come 
to  the  wanderings,  alightings,  fertilisings  of  man's 
thought. 

Will  you  forgive  my  starting  off  with  a  small  personal 
experience  which  (since  we  have  just  been  talking  of  a 
very  common  weed)  may  here  come  in  not  inappropri- 
ately? I  received  a  message  the  other  day  from  an 
acquaintance,  a  young  engineer  in  Vancouver.  He 
had  been  constructing  a  large  dam  on  the  edge  of  a 
forest,  himself  the  only  European,  with  a  gang  of 
Japanese  labourers.  But  the  rains  proved  so  torrential, 
washing  down  the  sides  of  the  dam  as  fast  as  they  were 
heaped,  and  half  drowning  the  diggers,  that  at  length 
the  whole  party  sought  shelter  in  the  woods.  There,  as 
he  searched  about,  my  young  engineer  came  upon  a 
log-shanty,  doorless,  abandoned,  empty,  save  for  two 
pathetic  objects  left  on  the  mud  floor — the  one  a  burst 
kettle,  the  other  a  "soiled  copy"  (as  the  booksellers 
say)  of  one  of  my  most  unpopular  novels.  You  see, 
there  is  no  room  for  vanity  in  the  narrative — a  burst 
kettle  and  this  book — the  only  two  things  not  worth 
taking  away !  Yet  I — who  can  neither  make  nor  mend 
kettles — own  to  a  thrill  of  pride  to  belong  to  a  call- 
ing that  can  fling  the  other  thing  so  far;  and  nurse  a 
hope  that  the  book  did,  in  its  hour,  cheer  rather  than 
dispirit  that  unknown  dweller  in  the  wilderness. 

But  indeed — to  come  to  more  serious  and  less  dead, 
though  more  ancient,  authors — you  never  can  tell  how 
long  this  or  that  of  theirs  will  lie  dormant,  then  sud- 
denly spring  to  life.  Someone  copies  down  a  little  poem 
on  reed  paper,  on  the  back  of  a  washing  bill :  the  paper 
goes  to  wrap  a  mummy ;  long  centuries  pass ;  a  tomb  is 
laid  bare  of  the  covering  sand,  and  from  its  dead  ribs 
they  unwind  a  passionate  lyric  of  Sappho: 


12  Studies  in  Literature 


01  ^xev  (xxiQtov  <rrp<kov,  o£ 
of  Be  vawv  <pa!a'  1x1  y2v  [xeXatvav 
xdtXXtcrroV  eyw  Bs  XYJV'  OT- 


Troops  of  horse-soldiers,  regiments  of  footmen, 
Fleets  in  full  sail  —  "What  sight  on  earth  so  lovely?" 
Say  you  :  but  my  heart  ah  !  above  them  prizes 
Thee,  my  Beloved. 

I  believe  that  this  one  was  actually  recovered  from  a 
rubbish-heap  :  but  another  such  is  unwrapped  from  the 
ribs  of  a  mummy,  of  a  woman  thousands  of  years  dead. 
Was  it  bound  about  them  because  her  heart  within  them 
perchance  had  beaten  to  it?  —  wrapped  by  her  desire 
—  by  the  hands  of  a  lover  —  or  just  by  chance?  As 
Sir  Thomas  Browne  says 

What  song  the  syrens  sang,  or  what  name  Achilles 
assumed  when  he  hid  himself  among  women,  though  puz- 
zling questions,  are  not  beyond  all  conjecture.  What  time 
the  persons  of  these  ossuaries  entered  the  famous  nations  of 
the  dead,  and  slept  with  princes  and  counsellors,  might 
admit  a  wide  solution.  But  who  were  the  proprietaries  of 
these  bones,  or  what  bodies  these  ashes  made  up,  were  a 
question  above  antiquarism. 

IV 

But  these  travels  and  resuscitations  of  the  written  or 
the  printed  word,  though  they  may  amuse  our  curiosity, 
are  nothing  to  marvel  at;  we  can  account  for  them.  I 
am  coming  to  something  far  more  mysterious. 

A  friend  of  mine,  a  far  traveller,  once  assured  me  that 
if  you  wanted  to  find  yourself  in  a  real  "gossip  shop"  — 
as  he  put  it  —  you  should  go  to  the  Sahara.  That  desert, 


The  Commerce  of  Thought  13 

he  informed  me  solemnly,  "is  one  great  sounding-board. 
You  scarcely  dare  to  whisper  a  secret  there.  You  can- 
not kill  a  man  in  the  Algerian  Sahara  even  so  far  south 
as  Fort  Mirabel  but  the  news  of  it  will  be  muttered 
abroad  somewhere  in  the  Libyan  desert,  say  at  Ain-el- 
Sheb,  almost  as  soon  as  a  telephone  (if  there  were  one, 
which  there  is  not)  could  carry  it. " 

Well,  doubtless  my  friend  overstated  it.  But  how  do 
you  account  for  the  folk-stories  ?  Take  any  of  the  fairy- 
tales you  know  best.  Take  Cinderella,  or  Red  Riding 
Hood  or  Hop  o'  my  Thumb.  How  can  you  explain  that 
these  are  common  not  only  to  widely  scattered  nations 
of  the  race  we  call  Aryan,  from  Asia  to  Iceland,  but 
common  also  to  savages  in  Borneo  and  Zululand,  the 
South  Sea  Islander,  the  American  Indian?  The  mis- 
sionaries did  not  bring  them,  but  found  them.  There 
are  tribal  and  local  variations,  but  the  tale  itself  cannot 
be  mistaken.  Shall  we  choose  Beauty  and  the  Beast? 
That  is  not  only  and  plainly,  as  soon  as  you  start  to 
examine  it,  the  Greek  tale  of  Cupid  and  Psyche,  pre- 
served in  Apuleius;  not  only  a  tale  told  by  nurses  in 
Norway  and  Hungary;  not  only  a  tale  recognisable  in 
the  Rig- Veda:  but  a  tale  told  by  Bornuese  and  by 
Algonquin  Indians.  Shall  we  choose  The  Wolf  who  ate 
the  Six  Kids  while  the  Seventh  was  hidden  in  the  Clock- 
case?  That  again  is  negro  as  well  as  European:  you 
may  find  it  among  the  exploits  of  Brer  Rabbit.  Or 
shall  we  choose  the  story  of  the  adventurous  youth  who 
lands  on  a  shore  commanded  by  a  wizard,  is  made  spell- 
bound and  set  to  do  heavy  tasks,  is  helped  by  the 
wizard's  pretty  daughter  and  escapes  with  her  aid. 
That  is  the  story  of  Jason  and  Medea :  you  may  find  all 
the  first  half  of  it  in  Shakespeare's  The  Tempest:  but 
you  may  also  find  it  (as  Andrew  Lang  sufficiently 


14  Studies  in  Literature 

proved)  "in  Japan,  among  the  Eskimo,  among  the 
Bushmen,  the  Samoyeds,  and  the  Zulus,  as  well  as  in 
Hungarian,  Magyar,  Celtic,  and  other  European  house- 
hold tales. " 

Well,  I  shall  not  give  a  guess,  this  evening,  at  the 
way  in  which  these  immemorial  tales  were  carried  and 
spread.  As  Emerson  said 

Long  I  followed  happy  guides, 
I  could  never  reach  their  sides; 
Their  step  is  forth,  and,  ere  the  day 
Breaks  up  their  leaguer,  and  away  .  .  . 
But  no  speed  of  mine  avails 
To  hunt  upon  their  shining  trails  .  .  . 
On  eastern  hills  I  see  their  smokes, 
Mixed  with  mist  by  distant  lochs. 

But  the  camp-fires  around  which  men  told  these  old 
tales  have  been  broken  up  for  the  next  day's  march, 
and  the  embers  trodden  out,  centuries  and  centuries 
ago. 

V 

Well,  now,  let  us  work  back  for  a  few  minutes  towards 
this  inexplicable  thing  through  something  of  which, 
though  marvellous,  we  may  catch  at  an  understanding. 
In  the  beginning  of  the  eighth  century  in  the  remote 
north  of  a  barbarous  tract  of  England,  a  monk  called 
Bede  founds  a  school.  He  is  (I  suppose)  of  all  men 
in  the  world  the  least — as  we  should  put  it  nowadays — 
self -advertising.  He  just  labours  there,  in  the  cloisters 
of  Jarrow,  never  leaving  them,  intent  only  on  his  page, 
for  the  love  of  scholarship.  Between  his  solitary  lamp 
and  the  continent  of  Europe  stretches  a  belt  of  fens,  of 
fog,  of  darkness,  broad  as  two-thirds  of  England; 


The  Commerce  of  Thought  15 

beyond  that,  the  Channel.  Yet  the  light  reaches  across 
and  over.  As  Portia  beautifully  says 

How  far  that  little  candle  throws  his  beams ! 
So  shines  a  good  deed  in  a  naughty  world. 

Men  on  the  continent  have  heard  of  Jarrow:  eyes  are 
watching;  in  due  time  Bede's  best  pupil,  Alcuin  of  York, 
gets  an  invitation  to  come  over  to  the  court  of  Charle- 
magne, to  be  its  educational  adviser.  So  Alcuin  leaves 
York,  soon  to  be  destroyed  with  its  fine  school  and 
library  by  the  Scandinavian  raiders  (for  your  true  bar- 
barian, even  when  he  happens  to  be  a  pedantic  one, 
always  destroys  a  library.  Louvain  is  his  sign-manual) 
— Alcuin  leaves  York  and  crosses  over  to  France  with 
his  learning.  Very  well:  but  how  can  you  explain  it, 
save  by  supposing  a  community  of  men  in  Europe  alert 
for  learning  as  merchants  for  gold,  kept  informed  of 
where  the  best  thing  was  to  be  had,  and  determined  to 
have  it? 

Yes,  and  we  are  right  in  supposing  this.  For  when 
light  begins  to  glimmer,  day  to  break,  on  the  Dark  Ages 
(as  we  call  them,  and  thereby  impute  to  them,  I  think, 
along  with  their  own  darkness  no  little  of  ours,  much 
as  the  British  seaman  abroad  has  been  heard  to  com- 
miserate "them  poor  ignorant  foreigners") — when  day- 
light begins  to  flow,  wavering,  and  spreads  for  us  over 
the  Dark  Ages,  what  is  the  first  thing  we  see?  I  will 
tell  you  what  is  the  first  thing  /  see.  It  is  the  Roads. 

VI 

That  is  why — to  your  mild  wonder,  maybe — I  began 
this  lecture  by  talking  of  the  old  trade-routes.  I  see 
the  Roads  glimmer  up  out  of  that  morning  twilight 


16  Studies  in  Literature 

with  the  many  men,  like  ants,  coming  and  going  upon 
them;  meeting,  passing,  overtaking;  knights,  mer- 
chants, carriers ;  justiciars  with  their  trains,  king's  mes- 
sengers riding  post;  afoot,  friars — black,  white  and 
grey — pardoners,  poor  scholars,  minstrels,  beggar-men; 
packhorses  in  files;  pilgrims,  bound  for  Walsingham, 
Canterbury,  or  to  Southampton,  to  ship  there  for  Com- 
postella,  Rome.  For  the  moment  let  us  limit  our  gaze  to 
this  little  island.  I  see  the  old  Roman  roads — Watling 
Street,  Ermine  Street,  Icknield  Street,  Akeman  Street, 
the  Fosse  Way  and  the  rest — hard-metalled,  built  in 
fine  layers,  from  the  foundation  or  pavimentum  of  fine 
earth  hard  beaten  in,  through  layers  of  large  stones, 
small  stones  (both  mixed  with  mortar),  pounded  nu- 
cleus of  lime,  clay  or  chalk,  brick  and  tile,  up  to  the 
paved  surface,  summum  dorsum;  one  running  north 
through  York  and  branching,  as  Hadrian  had  diverted 
it,  to  point  after  point  of  the  Great  Wall;  another  coast- 
wise towards  Cornwall;  a  third  for  Chester  and  on  to 
Anglesey,  a  fourth,  embanked  and  ditched,  through  the 
Cambridgeshire  fens :  I  see  the  minor  network  of  cross- 
roads, the  waterways  with  their  slow  freight.  You 
may  remember  a  certain  chapter  of  Rabelais,  concerning 
a  certain  Island  of  Odes  in  which  the  highways  keep 
moving,  moving  of  themselves ;  and  another  passage  in 
Pascal  in  which  the  rivers  are  seen  as  roads  themselves 
travelling  with  the  travellers. '  Well,  I  see  it  like  that; 
and  the  by-roads  where  outlaws  lurked;  the  eastern 
fens  where  a  hunted  man  could  hide  for  years,  the  lanes 
leading  to  sanctuary.  Some  years  ago,  in  Cornwall, 

1  It  is  observable  how  many  of  the  great  books  of  the  world — the 
Odyssey,  the  &neid,  The  Canterbury  Tales,  Don  Quixote,  The  Pilgrim's 
Progress,  Gil  Bias,  Pickwick  and  The  Cloister  and  the  Hearth— are  books 
of  wayfaring. 


The  Commerce  of  Thought  17 

I  took  an  old  map  and  decided  to  walk  by  a  certain  road 
marked  on  it.  My  host  averred  there  was  no  such  road 
in  the  parish;  his  brother,  a  district  councillor,  agreed. 
Well,  being  obstinate,  I  followed  the  old  map,  and  found 
that  road.  What  is  more,  after  tracking  it  for  a  quarter 
of  a  mile,  stooping  under  thorns  and  elders  and  pushing 
through  brambles,  I  came  in  the  dusk  upon  a  fire  and  a 
tramp  cooking  his  pot  over  it.  It  is  a  question  which  of 
us  two  received  the  greater  shock. 

VII 

Now  in  the  Middle  Ages,  to  keep  these  roads,  and 
especially  their  bridges,  in  repair  was  one  of  the  first 
calls  on  godly  piety:  nor  will  you  ever  begin  to  under- 
stand these  Middle  Ages  until  you  understand  their 
charitable  concern  for  all  travellers.  Turn  to  your 
Litany,  and  read : 

That  it  may  please  thee  to  preserve  all  that  travel  by  land 
or  by  water,  all  women  labouring  of  child,  all  sick  persons, 
and  young  children:  and  to  shew  thy  pity  upon  all  prisoners 
and  captives. 

Read  the  evidence  collected  by  Jusserand,  and  it  will 
leave  you  with  no  doubt  that  the  persons  thus  inter- 
ceded for  are  not  mixed  together  casually  or  carelessly; 
but  that  the  keeping  of  the  roads  in  repair  was  consid- 
ered as  a  pious  and  meritorious  work  before  God,  of  the 
same  sort  as  attending  the  sick  or  caring  for  the  poor, 
or  comforting  the  prisoners.  A  religious  order  of  Pon- 
tiffs (Pontifices,  bridge-makers)  built  bridges  in  many 
countries  of  Europe.  The  famous  Pont  d' Avignon  was 
one;  Pont  St.  Esprit  (still  in  use)  was  another.  A 
bridge  with  a  chapel  on  it  was  one  of  the  most  familiar 


i8  Studies  in  Literature 

features  of  medieval  England — a  chapel  and  a  toll-gate 
— the  church  being  no  more  averse  then  than  now  to 
"take  up  a  collection."  Old  London  Bridge,  with  a 
chapel  on  it — Old  London  Bridge  which  for  centuries 
was  the  marvel  of  England — Old  London  Bridge  which 
(mind  you)  remained  until  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  until  Dr.  Johnson's  day,  the  only  bridge  span- 
ning the  Thames — was  begun  in  1176,  finished  in  1209, 
with  its  twenty  arches,  by  subscription  of  the  charitable. 
I  have  no  time,  this  afternoon,  to  draw  you  separate 
portraits  of  the  men  and  women  travelling  these  roads : 
but  medieval  literature  (and  especially  our  Chaucer) 
teems  with  pictures  of  them — pictures  which,  if  read 
with  imagination,  will  "depict  your  chamber  walls 
around"  as  with  a  moving  frieze.  I  shall  conclude  by 
choosing  one  familiar  figure  and  for  a  minute  or  two 
presenting  him  to  you,  with  what  he  meant :  the  Wan- 
dering Scholar. 

VIII 

He  is  young,  and  poor,  and  careless.  He  tramps  it 
on  foot,  and,  when  his  pocket  is  empty,  has  no  shame 
in  begging:  and  men  find  a  religious  reward  in  doling 
him  a  penny :  he  being  bound  for  one  of  the  great  uni- 
versities, of  whose  learning  the  world  has  heard;  for 
Oxford  or  Cambridge,  or  for  Paris,  or,  farther  yet,  for 
Bologna,  for  Salerno.  The  roads  of  Europe  are  full 
of  his  like.  No  one  quite  knows  how  it  has  happened. 
The  schools  of  Remigius  and  of  William  of  Champeaux 
(we  will  say)  have  given  Paris  a  certain  prestige  when 
a  mysterious  word,  a  rumour,  spreads  along  the  great 
routes,  of  a  certain  great  teacher  called  Abelard  whose 
voice  will  persuade  a  man's  soul  almost  out  of  his  body. 


The  Commerce  of  Thought  19 

The  fame  of  it  spreads  almost  as  pollen  is  wafted  on  the 
wind:  but  spreads,  and  alights,  and  fertilizes.  Forth- 
with, in  all  the  far  corners  of  Europe,  young  men  are 
packing  their  knapsacks,  bidding  good-bye  to  their 
homes,  waving  back  to  the  family  at  the  gate  as  they 
dare  the  great  adventure  and  fare  (say)  for  Paris,  intel- 
lectual queen  of  Europe. 

The  desire  of  the  moth  for  the  star!  The  ineffable 
spell  of  those  great  names — Paris,  Oxford,  Cambridge, 
Bologna,  Salamanca !  These  young  men  reach  at  length 
the  city  which  has  been  shining  in  their  imagination. 
The  light  fades  down  its  visionary  spires  to  a  narrow 
noisome  medieval  street  in  which  the  new  comer  is 
one  of  a  crowd,  a  turbulent  crowd  of  the  wantonest 
morals.  But  youth  is  there,  and  friendship:  to  be 
kept  green  through  the  years  of  later  life,  when  all 
this  young  blood  is  dispersed,  and  the  boys  have  shaken 
hands,  not  to  meet  again,  and  nothing  remains  in  com- 
mon to  Dick  of  York  and  Hans  of  Hungary  but  a 
memory  of  the  old  class-room  where  they  blew  on  their 
fingers,  and  took  notes  by  the  light  of  unglazed  windows, 
and  shuffled  their  numb  feet  in  the  straw. 

Let  me  instance  one  such  scholar — William  Dunbar, 
the  great  fifteenth-century  poet  of  Scotland.  He  was 
born  about  1460,  went  to  St.  Andrews  and  there  gradu- 
ated Master  of  Arts  in  1479:  at  once  became  an  Ob- 
servantine  Friar  of  the  Franciscan  Order,  and  started 
to  travel :  very  likely  took  ship  first  from  Leith  to  the 
Thames,  but  anyhow  crossed  to  France — the  little 
passenger  ships  of  those  days  carrying  a  hundred  besides 
their  crew.  Says  the  old  ballad: 

Men  may  leve  alle  gamys, 
That  saylen  to  seynt  Jamys ! 


20  Studies  in  Literature 

(that  is,  to  St.  James  of  Compostella) 

Ffor  many  a  man  hit  gramys  (vexes), 

When  they  begyn  to  sayle. 
Ffor  when  they  have  take  the  see, 
At  Sandwyche,  or  at  Wynchylsee, 
At  Brystow,  or  where  that  hit  bee, 

Theyr  hertes  begyn  to  fayle. 

Then  follows  an  extremely  moving  picture  of  the 
crowded  sea-sickness  on  board.  We  will  not  dwell  on  it. 
Somehow,  Dunbar  gets  to  France;  roves  Picardy;  is  in 
Paris  in  1491  and  mingles  with  the  scholars  of  the  Sor- 
bonne;  returns  home  by  way  of  London  (and  be  it  re- 
membered that  the  kingdoms  of  England  and  his  native 
Scotland  were  more  often  antagonistic  than  not  in  those 
days) ;  on  his  way  pauses  to  muse  on  London  Bridge — 
that  Bridge  of  which  I  spoke  to  you  a  few  minutes  ago — 
"lusty  Brigge  of  pylers  white"  he  calls  it  and  breaks 
into  this  noble  praise  of  our  City : 

London,  thou  art  of  townes  A  per  se. 

Soveraign  of  cities,  semeliest  in  sight, 
Of  high  renoun,  riches  and  royaltie; 

Of  lordis,  barons,  and  many  a  goodly  knyght; 

Of  most  delectable  lusty  ladies  bright ; 
Of  famous  prelatis,  in  habitis  clericall; 

Of  merchauntis  full  of  substaunce  and  of  myght: 
London,  thou  art  the  flour  of  Cities  all. 


Above  all  ryvers  thy  Ryver  hath  renowne, 

Whose  beryall  streamys,  pleasaunt  and  preclare, 

Under  thy  lusty  wallys  renneth  down, 

Where  many  a  swanne  doth  swymme  with  wyngis  fair; 
Where  many  a  barge  doth  saile,  and  row  with  are  (oars) ; 


The  Commerce  of  Thought  21 

Where  many  a  ship  doth  rest  with  toppe-royall. 
O,  towne  of  townes !  patrone  and  not  compare, 
London,  thou  art  the  floure  of  Cities  all. 

My  discourse,  like  many  a  better  one,  shall  end  with 
a  moral.  I  have  often  observed  in  life,  and  especially 
in  matters  of  education — you  too,  doubtless,  have  ob- 
served— that  what  folks  get  cheaply  or  for  nothing  they 
are  disposed  to  undervalue.  Indeed  I  suspect  we  all 
like  to  think  ourselves  clever,  and  it  helps  our  sense  of 
being  clever  to  adjust  the  worth  of  a  thing  to  the  price 
we  have  paid  for  it.  Now  the  medieval  scholar  I  have 
been  trying  to  depict  for  you  was  poor,  even  bitterly 
poor,  yet  bought  his  learning  dear.  Listen  to  Chaucer's 
account  of  him  when  he  had  attained  to  be  a  Clerk  of 
Oxenford,  and  to  enough  money  to  hire  a  horse: 

As  leene  was  his  hors  as  is  a  rake, 

And  he  nas  nat  right  fat,  I  undertake, 

But  looked  holwe,  and  ther-to  sobrely; 

Ful  thredbare  was  his  overeste  courtepy; 

For  he  hadde  geten  hym  yet  no  benefice, 

Ne  was  so  worldly  for  to  have  office; 

For  hym  was  levere  have  at  his  beddes  heed 

Twenty  bookes  clad  in  blak  or  reed 

Of  Aristotle  and  his  philosophic, 

Than  robes  riche,  or  fithele,  or  gay  sautrie: 

But  al  be  that  he  was  a  philosophre, 

Yet  hadde  he  but  litel  gold  in  cofre; 

But  al  that  he  myghte  of  his  freendes  hente 

On  bookes  and  his  lernynge  he  it  spente, 

And  bisily  gan  for  the  soules  preye 

Of  hem  that  yaf  hym  wher-with  to  scoleye. 

How  happy  would  such  a  poor  scholar  deem  us,  who 
have  printed  books  cheap  and  plenty,  who  have  news- 


22  Studies  in  Literature 

papers  brought  to  our  door  for  a  groat,  who  can  get  in 
less  than  an  hour  and  a  half  to  Oxford,  to  Cambridge, 
in  a  very  few  hours  to  Paris,  to  Rome — cities  of  his 
desire,  shining  in  a  land  that  is  very  far  off!  Neverthe- 
less I  tell  you,  who  have  listened  so  kindly  to  me  for  an 
hour,  that  in  the  commerce  and  transmission  of  thought 
the  true  carrier  is  neither  the  linotype  machine,  nor  the 
telegraph  at  the  nearest  post  office,  nor  the  telephone 
at  your  elbow,  nor  any  such  invented  convenience :  but 
even  such  a  wind  as  carries  the  seed,  "it  may  chance  of 
wheat,  or  of  some  other  grain  " :  the  old,  subtle,  winding, 
caressing,  omnipresent  wind  of  man's  aspiration.  For 
the  secret — which  is  also  the  reward — of  all  learning  lies 
in  the  passion  for  the  search. 


BALLADS 


'"PHE  Ballad  is,  of  all  forms  of  poetry,  about  the  most 
*  mysterious  and  singular:  singular  in  its  nature, 
mysterious  not  only  in  this  but  in  its  origin  and  its 
history. 

We  need  not,  here,  today,  trouble  ourselves  overmuch 
with  its  origin,  which  is  much  the  same  as  Melchizedek's. 
Yet  we  may  not  wholly  neglect  the  question.  There 
are,  as  you  probably  know,  two  conflicting  theories 
about  it ;  and  the  supporters  of  each  talk  like  men  ready 
to  shed  blood,  though  for  my  part  I  hold  that  a  very 
little  common  sense  might  reconcile  them;  since  each 
theory  contains  a  modicum  of  truth,'  and  each,  when 
pushed  to  the  extreme,  becomes  frantically  absurd. 

On  the  one  hand  we  have  the  theory — invented 
or  pioneered  by  Herder,  elaborated  and  oracularly 
preached  by  James  Grimm — that  these  "folk  songs" 
were  made  by  the  "folk" ;  that  they  burst  into  existence 
by  a  kind  of  natural  and  spontaneous  generation  in  a 
tribe  or  nation,  at  that  stage  of  culture  when  it  is  "for 
all  practical  purposes  an  individual";  that  a  ballad 
comes,  or  came,  into  being  much  as  the  floating  matter 
of  a  nebula  condenses  to  form  a  star. 

Now  there  is  much  truth  in  this.  A  tribe  meets  to- 
gether to  celebrate  some  occasion  of  common  interest — 
23 


24  Studies  in  Literature 

a  successful  hunt,  a  prosperous  foray,  the  wedding  of 
its  chief,  the  return  of  the  god  who  brings  summer,  the 
end  of  a  religious  fast,  a  harvest  home.  As  Professor 
Kittredge  puts  it  in  his  Introduction  to  the  abridgement 
of  Child's  great  collection  of  Ballads : 

The  object  of  the  meeting  is  known  to  all ;  the  deeds  which 
are  to  be  sung,  the  dance  which  is  to  accompany  and  illus- 
trate the  singing,  are  likewise  familiar  to  everyone.  There 
is  no  such  diversity  of  intellectual  interests  as  characterises 
even  the  smallest  company  of  civilised  men.  There  is  unity 
of  feeling  and  a  common  stock,  however  slender,  of  ideas  and 
traditions.  The  dancing  and  singing,  in  which  all  share,  are 
so  closely  related  as  to  be  practically  complementary  parts 
of  a  single  festal  act.  .  .  .  And  this  is  no  fancy  picture. 
It  is  the  soberest  kind  of  science, — a  mere  brief  chapter  of 
descriptive  anthropology,  for  which  authorities  might  be 
cited  without  number. 

Let  me  add  that  all  this  rests  on  the  early  discovery  of 
man  that  all  manual  or  bodily  labour  is  enormously  in- 
creased in  effect,  when  timed  to  rhymth.  So  a  regiment 
marches  to  a  band;  so  the  tramp  of  a  column  crossing 
a  light  bridge  has  to  be  broken  lest  the  timed  impact 
wreck  the  structure ;  so  in  the  Peninsular  War  a  British 
regiment  heaved  down  a  wall  apparently  immovable, 
by  lining  against  it  and  applying  bodily  pressure  in  suc- 
cessive rhythmical  waves.  So  I,  who  have  lived  most 
of  my  life  over  a  harbour,  have  seen  and  heard  crews 
weighing  anchor  at  windlass  or  capstan,  or  hauling  on 
ropes,  to  a  sailors'  chanty,  the  solo-man  intoning 

We  have  a  good  ship  and  a  jolly  good  crew! 

the  chorus  taking  him  up 

And  away,  away  Rio! 


Ballads  25 

So  also — as  we  saw  in  one  of  the  lectures  last  term — the 
children  in  our  streets  help  out  dance  with  song  in  such 
primitive  games  as  "Sally,  Sally  Waters,"  "Here  come 
three  Dukes  a-riding,"  or 

London  Bridge  is  broken  down, 
Dance  over,  my  Lady  Lee! 

The  "nebular"  theorists  have  etymology,  too,  on  their 
side,  for  what  it  is  worth.  Undoubtedly  "ballad" 
comes  from  the  late  Latin  verb  ballare  "to  dance, "  and 
should  mean  a  song  accompanied  by  dancing.  Un- 
doubtedly some  old  ballads  with  their  refrains  are  refer- 
able to  that  origin — the  famous  old  one  of  Binnorie, 
for  example,  with  its  chorus: 

There  were  twa  sisters  sat  in  a  bour; 

Binnorie,  0  Binnorie! 
There  cam  a  knight  to  be  their  wooer, 

By  the  bonnie  milldams  o'  Binnorie. 

But  this  only  applies  to  some  ballads,  and  these  a  few. 
The  theory,  pushed  to  cover  all,  exposes  its  absurdity 
in  Grimm's  famous  phrase  "das  Volk  dichtet. " 

That  let  in  Schlegel,  who  at  first  had  nibbled  at 
Grimm's  theory;  as  it  lets  in  all  those  who  maintain 
(and  I  think  incontrovertibly)  that,  after  all,  in  the  end 
a  ballad  must  be  composed  by  somebody;  and  if  you 
think  a  ballad  can  be  composed  by  public  meeting,  just 
call  a  public  meeting  and  try!  In  human  experience 
poetry  doesn't  get  written  in  that  way:  it  requires  an 
author.  Moreover  these  ballads,  as  they  come  down  to 
us,  though  overlaid  by  improvements  by  Tom,  Dick 
and  Harry,  are  things  of  genius,  individual.  As  for 
etymology,  if  balada  be  the  origin  of  ballad,  so  is  it  of  the 


26  Studies  in  Literature 

ballet:  and  so  is  sonetto  the  origin  alike  of  a  Beethoven's 
Moonlight  Sonata  and  a  Miltonic  or  Wordsworthian 
Sonnet.  Sonetto  means  a  song  accompanied  by  instru- 
mental music.  It  is  all  very  well  to  say  that  in  Milton's 
hands  "the  Thing  became  a  trumpet " ;  but  he  certainly 
did  not  attune  it  to  an  instrumental  obbligato. 

So  you  get  the  opposing  "artistic"  theory;  that  our 
ballads  were  composed  by  minstrels,  gleemen,  sc6ps, 
skalds,  bards ;  itinerant  professional  singers  who  com- 
posed them  and  recited  them  at  wakes,  fairs  and  feasts, 
from  town  to  town,  from  hall  to  hall.  Bishop  Percy, 
and  generations  of  scholars  after  him,  ascribed  the  com- 
position of  our  ballads  to  these  professional  minstrels 
almost  as  a  matter  of  course.  Nor,  to  my  mind,  does 
Professor  Kittredge  make  a  very  shrewd  point  when  he 
says 

Such  ballads  as  have  been  recovered  from  oral  tradition 
in  recent  times  (and  these  .  .  .  comprise  the  vast  majority 
of  our  texts)  have  not,  except  now  and  then,  been  taken 
down  from  the  recitation  or  the  singing  of  minstrels,  or  of 
any  order  of  men  who  can  be  regarded  as  the  descendants  or 
representatives  of  minstrels.  They  have  almost  always 
been  found  in  the  possession  of  simple  folk  whose  relation 
to  them  was  in  no  sense  professional. 

Quite  so:  and  the  simple  answer  is  that  the  itiner- 
ant singer  died  more  than  three  hundred  years  ago. 
Whether  of  inanition,  passing  out  of  vogue,  or  because 
the  invention  of  printing  killed  him,  die  he  did:  and 
he  left  no  professional  descendants,  because  the  print- 
ing-press had  destroyed  the  profession.  You  can- 
not collect  ballads  straight  from  the  lips  of  men  three 
hundred  years  in  the  grave.  Whence  in  the  world  would 
anyone  expect  to  recover  them,  save  from  descendants 


Ballads  27 

of  those  simple  folk  for  whom  they  were  written  and 
from  whom  they  have  been  transmitted? 

Nor  again  does  that  seem  to  me  a  wholly  triumphant 
objection  which  Dr.  Gummere  makes  in  his  chapter  on 
Ballads  in  The  Cambridge  History  of  English  Literature. 
Says  he: 

Still  stronger  proof  lies  in  the  fact  that  we  have  the  poetry 
which  the  minstrels  did  make;  and  it  is  far  removed  from 
balladry. 

This,  to  start  with,  is  inaccurate.  We  have  not  the 
poetry  which  the  minstrels  did  make :  we  have  only  some 
of  it.  But  truly  you  could  hardly  have  a  better  example 
of  the  root-blindness  which  affects  men  who  treat  litera- 
ture learnedly  as  a  dead  thing,  without  having  served 
an  apprenticeship  in  it  as  a  living  art.  Anyone  who 
practises  writing,  quickly  learns  that  appropriateness  to 
subject  and  audience  is  a  great  part  of  the  secret  of  style ; 
and  the  defter,  the  more  accomplished,  the  more  tactful 
your  artist  is,  the  less  surely  can  you  argue  (say)  from 
his  manner  in  light  verse  to  his  manner  in  a  pulpit. 
Let  me  give  you  an  example.  Here  is  the  opening  of  a 
nineteenth  century  ballad : 

Ben  Battle  was  a  soldier  bold, 

And  used  to  war's  alarms : 
But  a  cannon-ball  took  off  his  legs, 

So  he  laid  down  his  arms! 

Now  as  they  bore  him  off  the  field, 

Said  he,  "Let  others  shoot, 
For  here  I  leave  my  second  leg, 

And  the  Forty-second  Foot!" 

And  here  is  the  opening  of  a  poem  of  about  the  same 
date 


28  Studies  in  Literature 

I  saw  old  Autumn  in  the  misty  morn 
Stand  shadowless  like  Silence,  listening 
To  silence,  for  no  lonely  bird  would  sing 
Into  his  hollow  ear  from  woods  forlorn .... 

Now,  supposing  the  authorship  of  Faithless  Nelly  Gray 
to  be  uncertain,  what  is  more  certain  than  that  a  scholar 
of  Dr.  Gummere's  type  would  demonstrate  the  impossi- 
bility of  its  having  been  written  by  Thomas  Hood 
"because  we  have  Hood's  Ode  to  Autumn,  and  it  is  far 
removed  from  Faithless  Nelly  Gray"'?  Yet  as  a  fact  he 
would  be  quite  wrong;  because  Hood  wrote  them  both. 

No:  the  really  important  point  about  ballads  has 
nothing  to  do  with  "who  wrote  them?"  even  if  that 
could  be  discovered  at  this  time  of  day.  It  matters 
very  little  to  us,  at  any  rate,  if  they  were  written  by  the 
people.  What  gives  them  their  singularity  of  nature  is 
that,  whoever  wrote  them,  wrote  them  for  the  people: 
and  to  this  singularity,  this  individuality,  by  a  paradox, 
their  curious  avoidance  of  the  self-conscious  personal 
touch  will  be  found  (I  think)  in  no  small  degree  to  con- 
tribute. 

II 

Let  us  first,  however,  establish  that  the  Ballad  has  a 
nature  of  its  own  among  poetic  forms;  is  a  thing  by 
itself,  or,  as  Professor  Ker  puts  it,  "the  Ballad  is  an  Idea, 
a  poetical  Form,  which  can  take  up  any  matter  and  does 
not  leave  that  matter  as  it  was  before. "  Professor  Ker 
goes  on : 

In  spite  of  Socrates  and  his  logic,  we  may  venture  to  say, 
in  answer  to  the  question  "What  is  a  Ballad?"— "A  Ballad 
is  The  Milldams  of  Binnorie  and  Sir  Patrick  Spens  and  The 


Ballads  29 

Douglas  Tragedy  and  Childe  Maurice,  and  things  of  that 
sort. " 

"And  things  of  that  sort. "  Let  me  read  you  a  sample 
or  two  of  the  sort  of  thing.  Here  are  a  few  stanzas  from 
Tarn  Lin: 

Janet  has  kilted  her  green  kirtle 

A  little  abune  the  knee; 
And  she  has  snooded  her  yellow  hair 

A  little  abune  her  bree, 
And  she  is  on  to  Miles  Cross 

As  fast  as  she  can  hie. 

About  the  dead  hour  o'  the  night 

She  heard  the  bridles  ring; 
And  Janet  was  as  glad  at  that 

As  any  earthly  thing. 

And  first  gaed  by  the  black,  black  steed, 

And  syne  gaed  by  the  brown ; 
But  fast  she  gript  the  milk-white  steed 

And  pu'd  the  rider  down. 

She's  pu'd  him  frae  the  milk-white  steed, 

An'  loot  the  bridle  fa', 
And  up  there  rase  an  eldritch  cry, 
"True  Tarn  Lin  he's  awa ' ! " 


They  shaped  him  in  her  arms  at  last 

A  mother-naked  man; 
She  cast  her  mantle  over  him, 

And  sae  her  love  she  wan. 

Up  then  spak'  the  Queen  of  Fairies, 

Out  o'  a  bush  o'  broom, 
"She  that  has  borrow'd  young  Tarn  Lin 

Has  gotten  a  stately  groom. " 


30  Studies  in  Literature 

Out  then  spak'  the  Queen  o'  Fairies, 

And  an  angry  woman  was  she, 
"She's  ta'en  awa'  the  bonniest  knight 

In  a'  my  companie! 

"But  what  I  ken  this  night,  Tarn  Lin, 

Gin  I  had  kent  yestreen, 
I  wad  ta'en  out  thy  heart  o'  flesh, 

And  put  in  a  heart  o'  stane. 

"And  adieu,  Tarn  Lin!    But  gin  I  had  kent 

A  ladye  wad  borrow'd  thee, 
I  wad  ta'en  out  thy  twa  grey  e'en 

Put  in  twa  e'en  o'  tree. 

"And  had  I  the  wit  yestreen,  yestreen, 

That  I  have  coft  this  day, 
I'd  paid  my  teind  seven  times  to  hell 

Ere  you  had  been  won  away!" 

Here  are  some  verses  from  a  carol-ballad — that  of  The 
Seven  Virgins: 

All  under  the  leaves  and  the  leaves  of  life 

I  met  with  virgins  seven, 
And  one  of  them  was  Mary  mild, 

Our  Lord's  mother  of  Heaven. 

"O  what  are  you  seeking,  you  seven  fair  maids, 

All  under  the  leaves  of  life? 
Come  tell,  come  tell,  what  seek  you 

All  under  the  leaves  of  life?" 

"We're  seeking  for  no  leaves,  Thomas, 

But  for  a  friend  of  thine; 
We're  seeking  for  sweet  Jesus  Christ, 

To  be  our  guide  and  thine. " 


Ballads  31 

"Go  down,  go  down,  to  yonaer  town, 

And  sit  in  the  gallery, 
And  there  you'll  see  sweet  Jesus  Christ, 

Nail'd  to  a  big  yew-tree." 


Then  He  laid  his  head  on  His  right  shoulder, 
Seeing  death  it  struck  Him  nigh — 

"The  Holy  Ghost  be  with  your  soul, 
I  die,  Mother  dear,  I  die. " 

O  the  rose,  the  gentle  rose, 
And  the  fennel  that  grows  so  green! 

God  give  us  grace  in  every  place 
To  pray  for  our  king  and  queen. 

Furthermore  for  our  enemies  all 
Our  prayers  they  should  be  strong: 

Amen,  good  Lord;  your  charity 
Is  the  ending  of  my  song. 

Or  here  two  stanzas  from  another  old  narrative  carol- 
/  saw  Three  Ships; 

O  they  sail'd  in  to  Bethlehem! 

—  To  Bethlehem,  to  Bethlehem; 
Saint  Michael  was  the  steresman, 

Saint  John  sate  in  the  horn. 

And  all  the  bells  on  earth  did  ring 

—  On  earth  did  ring,  on  earth  did  ring: 
"Welcome  be  thou  Heaven's  King, 

On  Christ's  Sunday  at  morn!" 

Here  are  three  stanzas  from  a  ballad  in  dialogue- 
Edward,  Edward: 


32  Studies  in  Literature 

"Why 'does  your  brand  sae  drop  wi'  blude, 

Edward,  Edward? 
Why  does  your  brand  sae  drop  wi'  blude, 

And  why  sae  sad  gang  ye,  O?" — 
"O  I  hae  kill'd  my  hawk  sae  gude, 

Mither,  mither; 

O  I  hae  kill'd  my  hawk  sae  gude, 
And  I  had  nae  mair  but  he,  0." 


"Your  hawk's  blude  was  never  sae  red, 

Edward,  Edward; 
Your  hawk's  blude  was  never  sae  red, 

My  dear  son,  I  tell  thee,  0." — 
"01  hae  kill'd  my  red-roan  steed, 

Mither,  mither; 

O  I  hae  kill'd  my  red-roan  steed, 
That  erst  was  sae  fair  and  free,  O. " 


"Your  steed  was  auld,  and  ye  hae  got  mair, 

Edward,  Edward; 
Your  steed  was  auld,  and  ye  hae  got  mair; 

Some  other  dule  ye  dree,  O. " — 
"O  I  hae  kill'd  my  father  dear, 

Mither,  mither; 

O  I  hae  kill'd  my  father  dear, 

Alas,  and  wae  is  me,  O!" 


And  here  is  one  from  a  ballad  with  a  refrain — The  Cruel 
Brother.  [But  I  should  say  in  parenthesis  that,  of  the 
ballads  which  survive  to  us,  few  carry  a  refrain:  they 
are  far  fewer  than  to  justify  the  stress  laid  on  the  re- 
frain by  those  who  trace  all  balladry  to  communal 
dancing.  The  vast  majority  as  we  have  them,  tell 
straightforward  stories  straightforwardly.] 


Ballads  33 

There  were  three  ladies  play'd  at  the  ba', 

With  a  hey  ho!  and  a  lily  gay/ 
By  came  a  knight  and  he  woo'd  them  a' 
As  the  primrose  spreads  so  sweetly. 

Sing  Annet,  and  Marret,  and  fair  Maisrie, 
As  the  dew  hangs  i'  the  wood,  gay  ladie! 

Here  are  some  verses  of  a  Robin  Hood  Ballad  which 
tells  how  Robin,  having  won  the  King's  pardon  on  con- 
dition that  he  lived  at  the  King's  court,  homesickened 
for  the  green-wood  and  Barnesdale,  and  at  length 
obtained  leave  for  a  week's  furlough  there: 

When  he  came  to  greene-wood 

In  a  merry  morning, 
There  he  heard  the  notes  small 

Of  birds  merry  singing. 

"  It  is  far  gone, "  said  Robin  Hood, 

"That  I  was  latest  here; 
Me  list  a  little  for  to  shoot 

At  the  dunne  deer." 

Robin  slew  a  full  great  hart; 

His  horn  then  gan  he  blow, 
That  all  the  outlaws  of  that  forest 

That  horn  they  coulde  know, 

And  them  together  gathered 

In  a  little  throw; 
Seven  score  of  wight  young  men 

Came  ready  on  a  row, 

And  faire  didden  off  their  hoods, 

And  set  them  on  their  knee: 
"Welcome,"  they  said,  "our  dear  master, 

Under  this  green- wood  tree!" 


34  Studies  in  Literature 

Robin  dwelt  in  greene-wood 
Twenty  year  and  two; 

For  all  dread  of  Edward  our  King, 
Again  would  he  not  go. 


Christ  have  mercy  on  his  soul, 

That  died  upon  the  rood ! 
For  he  was  a  good  outlaw, 

And  did  poor  men  much  good. 

And  here  finally  is  the  well-known  Lyke  Wake  Dirge, 
so  weird  and  wonderful: 

This  ae  nighte,  this  ae  nighte, 

— Every  nighte  and  alle, 
Fire  and  fleet  and  candle-lighte, 

And  Christe  receive  thy  saule. 

When  thou  from  hence  away  art  past, 

— Every  nighte  and  alle, 
To  Whinny-muir  thou  com'st  at  last: 

And  Christe  receive  thy  saule. 

If  ever  thou  gavest  hosen  and  shoon, 

— Every  nighte  and  alle, 
Sit  thee  down  and  put  them  on: 

And  Christe  receive  thy  saule. 

If  hosen  and  shoon  thou  ne'er  gav'st  nane 

— Every  nighte  and  alle, 
The  whinnes  sail  prick  thee  to  the  bare  bane; 

And  Christe  receive  thy  saule. 

From  whinny-muir  when  thou  may'st  pass, 

— Every  nighte  and  alle, 
To  Brig  o'  Dread  thou  com'st  at  last; 

And  Christe  receive  thy  saule. 


Ballads  35 

From  Brig  o'  Dread  when  thou  may'st  pass, 

— Every  nighte  and  alle, 
To  Purgatory  fire  thou  com'st  at  last; 

And  Christe  receive  thy  saule. 

If  ever  thou  gavest  meat  or  drink, 

— Every  nighte  and  alle, 
The  fire  sail  never  make  thee  shrink; 

And  Christe  receive  thy  saule. 

If  meat  or  drink  thou  ne'er  gav'st  nane, 

— Every  nighte  and  alle, 
The  fire  will  burn  thee  to  the  bare  bane; 

And  Christe  receive  thy  saule. 

This  ae  nighte,  this  ae  nighte, 

— Every  nighte  and  alle, 
Fire  and  fleet  and  candle-lighte, 

And  Christe  receive  thy  saule. 

Now  I  put  it  to  you,  Gentlemen,  that  all  these  ex- 
tracts, with  all  their  difference  of  subject,  have  a 
common  note  at  once  unmistakable  and  indefinable;  a 
note  which  attests  them  all  as  poetical  and  as  alike,  and 
yet  as  somehow  different  from  any  other  poetry  we 
know :  certainly  different  from  the  note  of  any  conscious 
poet  known  to  us.  And  this  peculiar  ballad-note  per- 
sists, perseveres,  even  down  to  late  times  and  whether 
the  ballad  sing  high  or  low. 

It  can  sing  high : 

Half-owre,  half-owre  to  Aberdour 

'Tis  fifty  fathom  deep; 
And  there  lies  gude  Sir  Patrick  Spens 

Wi'  the  Scots  lords  at  his  feet. 

(Sir  Patrick  Spens} 


36  Studies  in  Literature 

Or 

About  the  dead  hour  o'  the  night 
She  heard  the  bridles  ring. 

(Tarn  Lin) 

It  can  sing  low : 

Then  up  bespake  the  bride's  mother — 
She  never  was  known  to  speak  so  free — 

"Ye'll  not  forsake  my  only  daughter 
Though  Susie  Pye  has  crossed  the  sea:" 

(Young  Beichan) 


Or 


An'  thou  sail  marry  a  proud  gunner; 
An'  a  proud  gunner  I'm  sure  he'll  be. 

(The  Great  Silkie} 

It  can  gallop: 

O  there  was  horsing,  horsing  in  haste 
And  cracking  of  whips  out  owre  the  lee. 

(Archie  of  Cawfield} 

Or  it  can  be  merely  flat  pedestrianism : 

There  was  slayne  upon  the  Scottes'  side 

For  sooth  as  I  you  say, 
Of  four  and  fifty  thousand  Scottes 

Went  but  eighteen  away. 

(Otterburn) 

But  always  it  is  unmistakable,  and  like  no  other  thing 
in  poetry. 


Ballads  37 

III 

Now  as  we  study  this  peculiar  unmistakable  note, 
one  or  two  things  become  clear  to  us. 

It  becomes  clear,  in  the  first  place,  that  whether  or 
not  these  ballads  "wrote  themselves"  (as  Grimm  put 
it) — whether  or  not  they  were  written  by  the  people,  as 
they  certainly  were  for  the  people — it  is  no  accident  of 
chance  or  of  time  that  withholds  from  us  all  knowledge 
of  the  authorship.  We  discern  that  somehow  ano- 
nymity belongs  to  their  very  nature;  that  anonymity, 
impersonality,  permeates  their  form  and  substance. 
Let  me  apply  a  test  which  I  have  applied  elsewhere.  If 
any  known  man  ever  steeped  himself  in  balladry,  that 
man  was  Sir  Walter  Scott,  and  once  or  twice,  in  Proud 
Maisie  and  Brignall  Banks,  he  came  near  to  distil  the 
essence.  If  any  man,  taking  the  Ballad  for  his  model, 
has  ever  sublimated  its  feeling  and  language  in  a  poem 

seraphically  free 
From  taint  of  personality, 

that  man  was  Coleridge,  and  that  poem  The  Ancient 
Mariner.  If  any  writer  today  alive  can  be  called  a 
ballad- writer  of  genius,  it  is  the  author  of  Danny  Deever 
and  East  and  West.  But  suppose  a  bundle  of  most 
carefully  selected  ballads  by  Scott,  Coleridge,  Kipling, 
bound  up  in  a  volume  with  such  things  as  Clerk  Saun- 
ders,  Cospatrick,  Robin  Hood  and  the  Monk, — you  feel 
(do  you  not?) — you  know — they  would  intrude  almost, 
though  not  quite,  as  obviously  as  would  a  ballad  of 
Rossetti's  or  one  from  Morris's  Defence  of  Guinevere. 

Now  we  must  never  forget  that  the  old  ballads  have 
come  down  to  us  orally,  after  centuries  of  transmis- 
sion through  the  memories  of  simple  people  who  never 


38  Studies  in  Literature 

thought  of  them  as  "literature";  that  in  fact,  barring 
the  broadsides,  they  never  were  "literature"  or  written 
speech  at  all,  until  Bishop  Percy  in  1765  started  apolo- 
getically to  make  them  literature.  And  so  I  have  some- 
times fancied  that  the  impress  of  their  authorship  may 
merely  have  worn  away  as  the  impress  on  a  shilling 
wears  away  after  years  of  transference  from  pocket  to 
pocket.  There  is  something  in  this;  and  there  is  more 
in  it  when  we  remind  ourselves  that  a  ballad  written  on 
one  memorable  event  will  often  have  been  recast  and 
refurbished  to  commemorate  another.  Let  me  illustrate 
this  from  the  fortunes  of  a  beautiful  one,  The  Queen's 
Marie.  You  all  know  it : 

When  she  cam  to  the  Netherbow  port, 

She  la  ugh 'd  loud  laughters  three; 
But  when  she  cam  to  the  gallows  foot 

The  tears  blinded  her  e'e. 

"Yestreen  the  Queen  had  four  Maries, 

The  night  she'll  hae  but  three; 
There  was  Marie  Seaton,  and  Marie  Beaton, 

And  Marie  Carmichael,  and  me. 


"O  little  did  my  mother  ken, 

The  day  she  cradled  me, 
The  lands  I  was  to  travel  in, 

Or  the  dog's  death  I  wad  d'ee!" 

Now  Professor  Child  collected  and  printed  some 
twenty-eight  variants  and  fragments  of  this  ballad — 
which  is  a  somewhat  late  one,  if  its  story  can  be  traced 
no  farther  back  than  1563  Then,  or  about  then,  Mary 
Queen  of  Scots  had  four  Maries  among  her  gentle- 
women— Mary  Seaton,  Mary  Beaton,  Mary  Fleming 


Ballads  39 

and  Mary  Livingstone :  and  Knox,  in  his  History  of  the 
Reformation,  relates  a  tragic  scandal,  involving  the 
queen's  apothecary  and  "a  Frenchwoman  that  served 
in  the  Queen's  bedchamber."  This  is  substantially 
the  story  told  in  the  ballad;  which,  however,  in  most 
versions  makes  the  king  himself  ("the  highest  Stewart 
of  a'")  to  be  the  male  sinner.  But  why  Mary  Car- 
michael  and  Mary  Hamilton  in  place  of  Mary  Fleming 
and  Mary  Livingstone?  Well,  we  must  travel  to 
Russia  for  it.  There,  after  the  marriage  of  one  of  the 
ministers  of  Peter  the  Great's  father  with  a  Hamilton, 
that  Scottish  family  ranked  with  the  Russian  aris- 
tocracy. The  Czar  Peter  was  punctilious  that  all  his 
Empress  Catharine's  maids-of-honour  should  be  re- 
markable for  good  looks ;  a  niece  of  the  minister's  wife,  a 
Mary  Hamilton,  was  appointed  for  her  extreme  beauty. 
There  followed  an  amour  with  one  Orloff,  an  aide-de- 
camp to  the  Czar:  a  murdered  babe  was  found,  the  guilt 
traced  to  Mary.  Orloff  was  arrested  but  subsequently 
reprieved  or  pardoned.  Mary  Hamilton  suffered  ex- 
ecution, on  March  14,  1719. 

Here,  then,  we  have  a  story  almost  precisely  similar 
to  that  of  the  ballad ;  with  a  real  Mary  Hamilton,  who 
does  not  occur  historically  in  the  scandal  of  1563.  Her 
date  is  1719:  and  yet  no  one  with  the  smallest  sense  of 
poetry  can  put  the  ballad  so  late,  or  anywhere  within  a 
hundred  years  of  1719.  Obviously  the  old  ballad  was 
re-adapted  to  fit  a  new  scandal  in  high  life.  But,  mark 
yet  again,  the  stanza  about  the  four  Maries  is  merely 
incidental  and  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  scandal :  and 
as  that  kind  of  scandal  has  been  common  enough  in 
courts  from  very  early  times,  there  is  no  reason  why  the 
ballad  should  not  reach  back  to  very  early  times,  have 
been  adapted  to  the  business  of  1563  and  re-adapted  to 


40  Studies  in  Literature 

the  business  of  1719.     Speculation,  to  be  sure! — But 
that  is  where  you  always  are  with  ballads. 

Yet — no !  Our  simile  of  the  shilling  worn  in  passing 
from  pocket  to  pocket,  will  not  do.  For  it  is  not  only 
that  the  more  a  ballad  suffers  wear  and  change  the  more 
it  remains  the  same  thing :  it  is  that  the  more  it  wears, 
the  more  it  takes  that  paradoxically  sharp  impress,  the 
impress  of  impersonality. 


IV 


The  next  point  to  be  noted  of  the  Ballad  is  its  extra- 
ordinary rapidity  of  movement.  Rapidity  of  movement 
has  been  preached  of  the  epic  by  Horace,  and  by  Mat- 
thew Arnold  specially  commended  in  Homer.  But,  for 
rapidity,  these  innominate  lays  beat  anything  in  Homer. 
I  remember  studying,  once  on  a  time,  a  treatise  on 
American  cocktails  and  coming  on  the  following  rider 
to  a  recipe  for  a  mixed  liquor  entitled  Angler's  Punch — 
"N.  B. — This  punch  can  also  be  put  up  in  bottles,  so 
that  the  Angler  may  lose  no  time." 

Now  the  true  Ballad  is  put  up  (doubtless  upon  ex- 
perience) so  that  the  audience  loses  no  time : 

The  king  sits  in  Dunfermline  town 
Drinking  the  blude-red  wine; 

and  forthwith  he  asks 

"O  whare  will  I  get  a  skeely  skipper 
To  sail  this  new  ship  o'  mine?" 

And  "What,"  Professor  Ker  very  pertinently  asks, 
"What  would  the  story  of  Sir  Patrick  Spens  be  worth  if  it 
was  told  in  any  other  way — with  a  description  of  the 


Ballads  41 

scenery  about  Dunfermline,  the  domestic  establishment 
of  the  King  of  Norway,  and  the  manners  of  the  court?" 
This  rapidity  of  movement  is  constant,  and  (if  it  be 
not  begging  the  question  to  term  it  so)  "professional." 
There  are  tricks,  cliches,  always  at  hand  to  carry  us  from 
one  incident  to  another: 

They  hadna  sail'd  a  league,  a  league 
A  league  but  barely  three  .  .  . 

when  something  new  is  ready  to  happen.  The  little 
foot-page,  after  he  has  duly  louted  on  his  knee  and 
received  the  fatal  message,  always  runs  with  it  and  has 
to  cross  a  river : 

And  whan  he  came  to  the  broken  briggs 
He  bent  his  bow  and  swam  .  .  . 

actually  bending  his  bow  (I  suppose)  and  laying  his 
arms  across  it  while  he  kicked  his  legs,  swimming :  and 
so  on.  Almost  always  you  will  find  the  intervals  hurried 
over  in  this  way,  and  it  would  seem  that  the  audience 
(easy  with  conventions  as  simple  folk  are)  took  these 
formulae  for  granted  as  the  right  and  proper  bridges 
over  dull  gaps  of  narrative. 


Now  let  me  draw  four  lines  for  you:  the  first  two 
across  the  map,  the  second  two  in  historical  time. 

Across  the  map  of  England  and  Scotland  I  draw  my 
first  and  northerly  line  from  the  Firth  of  Forth  to  the 
Clyde;  my  second  and  southerly  from  Newcastle-on- 
Tyne  to  St.  Bee's  Head.  Between  these  two  lines  lie 
almost  all  the  places  most  celebrated  in  ballad  poetry. 
They  crowd  thicker  and  thicker  as  on  either  side  they 


42  Studies  in  Literature 

near  the  ancient  Border  of  the  two  kingdoms:  but  I 
draw  no  line  here,  being  cautious;  because,  as  you 
know,  the  men  of  whose  deeds  the  ballads  were  written 
— deeds  ranging  from  pitched  battle  to  the  reiving  of 
cattle  and  brides — drew  no  line  at  all,  either  in  morals 
or  geographically:  even  mathematically,  none  known  to 
Euclid.  Their  line  had  breadth.  At  the  thinnest  it 
was  a  strip;  and  they  called  this  strip  "The  Debatable 
Land." 

Now  of  course  all  the  many  ballads  of  Border  fights 
and  forays — from  Otterburn  and  Chevy  Chase  to  such 
things  as  Kinmont  Willie,  Hobbie  Noble,  Jamie  Telfer  in 
the  Fair  Dodhead — come  from  this  region.  But  these 
are  not  the  very  best ;  and  the  curious  fact  is  that  all  the 
very  best  ballads,  which  have  little  or  nothing  to  do 
with  forays  and  cattle-lifting,  also  come  from  this  region, 
and  specially  among  the  upper  waters  of  Tweed  and 
Teviot.  A  fact  is  a  fact,  and  a  guess  is  a  guess,  and  I 
can  bring  no  evidence  for  what  is  nevertheless  my  sincere 
belief — that  once  on  a  time  there  lived  just  hereabouts 
a  man  of  genius  who  gave  these  songs  their  immortal 
impress  and  taught  it  to  others  (also  he  may  have  taught 
the  children  of  the  Border  the  use  of  the  Bow). 

Now  these,  the  songs,  remain  to  eternity, 
Those,  only  those,  the  bountiful  choristers, 
Gone — those  are  gone,  those  unremembered 
Sleep  and  are  silent  in  earth  for  ever. 

As  Ecclesiasticus  has  it : 

Let  us  now  praise  famous  men,  and  our  fathers  that 
begat  us.  ...  Leaders  of  the  people  by  their  counsels,  and 
by  their  knowledge  of  learning  meet  for  the  people,  wise  and 
eloquent  in  their  instructions:  such  as  found  out  musical 


Ballads  43 

tunes,  and  recited  verses  in  writing.  .  .  .  All  these  were 
honoured  in  their  generations,  and  were  the  glory  of  their 
times.  There  be  of  them  that  have  left  a  name  behind 
them,  that  their  praises  might  be  reported.  And  some 
there  be,  which  have  no  memorial;  who  are  perished,  as 
though  they  had  never  been ;  and  are  become  as  though  they 
had  never  been  born ;  and  their  children  after  them. 

Or  as  Lucian  put  it : 

Mortal  are  the  things  of  mortals :  we  abide  as  they  decay. 
— If  you  doubt  this  proposition,  put  it  just  the  other  way. 

I  have  told  you  my  guess.  But  this  much  is  no 
guess. — Folk-poetry  being  a  large  word,  we  do  our 
scientific  sense  of  it  some  help  by  fixing  the  best  of 
this  form  of  our  literature  upon  a  certain  folk  inhabit- 
ing a  certain  limited  region,  which  we  find  to  lie  between 
the  Forth  and  the  Tyne. 

VI 

I  draw  my  other  two  lines,  which  are  chronological, 
at  the  years  1350  and  1550.  Almost  all  the  evidence 
shows  that  the  Ballad  with  the  impress  we  know  upon 
it,  rose,  flourished,  declined,  within  that  period.  The 
author  of  Piers  Plowman  mentions  "rimes  of  Robin 
Hood  and  Randolph,  earl  of  Chester"  as  known  to  the 
common  men  of  his  day:  Wynkyn  de  Worde  printed 
the  Lytell  Geste  of  Robyn  Hood,  as  we  have  it,  about  a 
hundred  and  forty  years  later :  but  when,  yet  a  century 
later,  we  come  to  the  Elizabethan  dramatists,  we  find 
them  holding  the  Ballad  in  open  derision.  Nor  could 
the  Last  Minstrel  of  that  age  (if  we  suppose  any  such 
person)  have  pleaded  with  Scott's  that 


44  Studies  in  Literature 

The  bigots  of  an  iron  time 

Had  called  his  harmless  art  a  crime  .  .  . 

the  truth  being  rather  that  he  had  delighted  the  com- 
pany long  enough.  A  new  poetry  had  come  into  vogue 
with  Wyatt  and  Surrey,  Grimald,  Lodge,  Lyly  and  the 
rest,  and  as  an  artistic  poem  the  Ballad  had  passed 
into  the  shade.  It  had  been,  as  we  know,  impersonal — 
curiously  impersonal — in  utterance:  its  business  had 
been  to  tell  a  plain  tale.  The  lyrical  cry  seldom  breaks 
from  it.  When  it  does,  at  its  most  poignant,  it  breaks 
forth  thus,  as  Leesome  Brand  buries  the  wife  he  has 
killed  unwittingly : 

There  is  a  feast  in  your  father's  house, 

The  broom  blooms  bonnie  and  sae  it  is  fair — 

It  becomes  you  and  me  to  be  very  douce, 
And  we'll  never  gang  down  to  the  broom  nae  mair. 


He's  houkit  a  grave,  long,  large  and  wide, 
The  broom  blooms  bonnie  and  sae  it  is  fair — 

He's  buried  his  auld  son  doun  by  her  side, 
And  we'll  never  gang  down  to  the  broom  nae  mair. 

It  was  nae  wonder  his  heart  was  sair 

The  broom  blooms  bonnie  and  sae  it  is  fair — 

When  he  shool'd  the  mools  on  her  yellow  hair, 
And  we'll  never  gang  down  to  the  broom  nae  mair. 

And  this  is  exquisitely  poignant :  but  it  is  not  personal, 
as  any  stanza  of  Wyatt's  is  personal:  for  instance 

And  wilt  thou  leave  me  thus, 
That  hath  loved  thee  so  long 
In  wealth  and  woe  among: 


Ballads  45 

And  is  thy  heart  so  strong 
As  for  to  leave  me  thus  ? 
Say  nay !  say  nay ! 

The  ballad-metre  had  been  simple,  almost  to  jog-trot 
(you  remember  Dr.  Johnson's  parody).  The  Ballad 
had  never  philosophised  its  emotion.  But  now  listen 
to  this: 

To  love  and  to  be  wise, 

To  rage  with  good  advice, 
Now  thus,  now  than,  so  goes  the  game, 

Uncertain  is  the  dice: 
There  is  no  man,  I  say,  that  can 

Both  love  and  to  be  wise. 

Keeping  that  stanza  in  mind,  let  us  take  an  old  ballad 
which  has  happened  to  attract  in  its  time  (i)  the  Eliza- 
bethan improver  and  (2)  the  eighteenth  century  embel- 
lisher, and  see  what  a  mess  they  both  make  of  it,  with 
the  best  intentions.  It  begins,  much  in  the  fashion  of 
the  Nut  Brown  Maid,  with  a  set  dialogue — a  dialogue 
between  a  lover  and  a  pilgrim  who  is  returning  from  the 
shrine  of  St.  Mary  at  Walsingham :  and  it  starts  in  the 
true  ballad-style.  (I  may  mention  that  it  is  quoted  in 
Fletcher's  play  The  Knight  of  the  Burning  Pestle.') 

"As  ye  came  from  the  holy  land 

Of  Walsingham, 
Met  you  not  with  my  true  love 

By  the  way  as  you  came?" 

"How  shall  I  know  your  true  love, 

That  have  met  many  a  one 
As  I  came  from  the  holy  land, 

That  have  come,  that  have  gone?" 


46  Studies  in  Literature 

"She  is  neither  white  nor  brown, 

But  as  the  heavens  fair; 
There  is  none  hath  her  form  divine, 

In  the  earth  or  the  air." 

"Such  a  one  did  I  meet,  Good  Sir, 

Such  an  angelique  face: 
Who  like  a  nymph,  like  a  queen  did  appear 

In  her  gait,  in  her  grace." 

"She  hath  left  me  here  alone, 

All  alone,  as  unknown, 
Who  sometime  did  me  lead  with  herself 

And  me  loved,  as  her  own." 

"What's  the  cause  that  she  leaves  you  alone 

And  a  new  way  doth  take, 
That  sometime  did  love  you  as  her  own 

And  her  joy  did  you  make?" 

"I  have  loved  her  all  my  youth, 

But  now  am  old,  as  you  see, 
Love  loves  not  the  falling  fruit, 

Nor  the  withered  tree." 

So  there  you  have,  with  its  pretty  anapaests,  a  little 
ballad-poem,  fairly  ended  and  closed.  Now  comes  in 
the  improving  Elizabethan  with  a  sophisticated  moral : 

Know  that  Love  is  a  careless  child, 

And  forgets  promise  past : 
He  is  blind,  he  is  deaf  when  he  list, 

And  in  faith  never  fast. 

His  desire  is  a  dureless  content 

And  a  trustless  joy; 
He  is  won  with  a  world  of  despair 

And  is  lost  with  a  toy. 


Ballads  47 

But  true  love  is  a  durable  fire 

In  the  mind  ever  burning, 
Never  sick,  never  old,  never  dead, 

From  itself  never  turning. 

You  see  how  far  we  are  getting  from  the  simplicity  of 
the  first  stanzas?  But  worse,  far  worse,  is  to  come. 
Bishop  Percy  found  this  version  in  his  folio:  but  a 
"corrected"  copy  was  forwarded  to  him  by  his  friend 
Mr.  Shenstone.  Now  Shenstone  was  by  no  means  a 
negligible  poet,  in  the  eighteenth  century  manner :  but 
tripping  anapaests  were  too  vulgar  for  him  and  thus 
he  emended : 

"As  ye  came  from  the  holy  land 

Of  blessed  Walsingham, 
O  met  you  not  with  my  true  love 

As  by  the  way  ye  came?" 

"How  shall  I  know  your  true  love 

That  have  met  many  a  one, 
As  I  came  from  the  holy  land 

That  have  both  come  and  gone?"  .  .  . 

and  so  on,  with  a  deadening  fist  on  each  stanza,  until 
we  come  to  this  superlative  ending : 

But  true  love  is  a  lasting  fire, 

Which  viewless  vestals  tend, 
That  burns  for  ever  in  the  soule, 

And  knowes  not  change  nor  end. 

"Viewless  Vestals"! 

VII 

Now  let  me  say,  before  concluding,  that  greatly  as  I 
adore  these  old  ballads  I  do  so  not  idolatrously.  They 
are  genuine  poetry,  peculiar  poetry,  sincere  poetry;  but 


48  Studies  in  Literature 

they  will  not  compare  with  the  high  music  of  Spenser's 
Epithalamion  or  of  Milton's  Lycidas  or  of  Keats'  Night- 
ingale. In  truth  any  comparison  of  the  ballads  with 
these  would  be  unfair  as  any  comparison  between 
children  and  grown  folk.  They  appealed  in  their  day 
to  something  young  in  the  national  mind.  They  have 
all  the  winning  grace  of  innocence :  but  they  cannot  scale 
the  great  poetical  heights  any  more  than  mere  innocence 
can  scale  the  great  spiritual  heights.  Tears  and  fasting 
and  bread  eaten  in  sorrow  go  to  that  achievement:  and 
who  has  not  known  and  tried  them  and  been  tried  by 
them 

He  knows  you  not,  ye  heavenly  powers ! 

I  but  contend  today  that  to  complain  of  the  fifteenth 
century  as  unpoetical,  turning  your  ear  aside  from  this 
outpouring  of  spring  numbers  to  listen  to  the  bagpipe 
drone  of  a  Lydgate  or  a  Hoccleve,  is  to  sin  like — a 
handbook. 

VIII 

I  end  with  a  ballad — The  Old  Cloak — which,  as  we 
are,  with  all  our  shortcomings,  a  humorous  nation,  de- 
served a  long  line  of  children,  but  in  fact  had  few  or 
none.  I  cannot  think  why.  It  runs  in  antiphon  like 
the  Nut  Brown  Maid,  and  is  a  supposed  dialogue  between 
a  good  man  and  his  wife : 

This  winter's  weather  it  waxeth  cold, 

And  frost  it  freezeth  on  every  hill, 
And  Boreas  blows  his  blast  so  bold 

That  all  our  cattle  are  like  to  spill. 
Bell,  my  wife,  she  loves  no  strife; 

She  said  unto  me  quietlye, 
"Rise  up,  and  save  cow  Crumbock's  life! 

Man,  put  thine  old  cloak  about  thee!" 


Ballads  49 

He.     O  Bell  my  wife,  why  dost  thou  flyte? 

Thou  kens  my  cloak  is  very  thin: 
It  is  so  bare  and  over  worn, 

A  cricke  thereon  cannot  renn. 
Then  I'll  no  longer  borrow  nor  lend; 

For  once  I'll  new  apparell'd  be; 
To-morrow  I'll  to  town  and  spend; 

For  I'll  have  a  new  cloak  about  me. 

She.    Cow  Crumbock  is  a  very  good  cow: 

She  has  been  always  true  to  the  pail; 
She  has  help'd  us  to  butter  and  cheese,  I  trow, 

And  other  things  she  will  not  fail. 
I  would  be  loth  to  see  her  pine. 

Good  husband,  counsel  take  of  me: 
It  is  not  for  us  to  go  so  fine — 

Man,  take  thine  old  cloak  about  thee! 


He.      My  cloak  it  was  a  very  good  cloak, 

It  hath  been  always  true  to  the  wear; 
But  now  it  is  not  worth  a  groat: 

I  have  had  it  four  and  forty  year'. 
Sometime  it  was  of  cloth  in  grain: 

'Tis  now  but  a  sigh  clout,  as  you  may  see: 
It  will  neither  hold  out  wind  nor  rain; 

And  I'll  have  a  new  cloak  about  me. 


She.     It  is  four  and  forty  years  ago 

Since  the  one  of  us  the  other  did  ken; 
And  we  have  had,  betwixt  us  two, 

Of  children  either  nine  or  ten: 
We  have  brought  them  up  to  women  and  men : 

In  the  fear  of  God  I  trow  they  be: 
And  why  wilt  thou  thyself  misken? 

Man,  take  thine  old  cloak  about  thee! 


50  Studies  in  Literature 

He.     0  Bell  my  wife,  why  dost  thou  flyte? 

Now  is  now,  and  then  was  then: 
Seek  now  all  the  world  throughout, 

Thou  kens  not  clowns  from  gentlemen: 
They  are  clad  in  black,  green,  yellow  and  blue, 

So  far  above  their  own  degree. 
Once  in  my  life  I'll  take  a  view; 

For  I'll  have  a  new  cloak  about  me. 

She.     King  Stephen  was  a  worthy  peer; 

His  breeches  cost  him  but  a  crown; 
He  held  them  sixpence  all  too  dear, 

Therefore  he  called  the  tailor  "lown." 
He  was  a  king  and  wore  the  crown, 

And  thou'se  but  of  a  low  degree: 
It's  pride  that  puts  this  country  down: 

Man,  take  thy  old  cloak  about  thee! 

He.     Bell  my  wife,  she  loves  not  strife, 

Yet  she  will  lead  me,  if  she  can: 
And  to  maintain  an  easy  life 

I  oft  must  yield,  though  I'm  good-man. 
It's  not  for  a  man  with  a  woman  to  threap, 

Unless  he  first  give  o'er  the  plea: 
As  we  began,  so  will  we  keep, 

And  I'll  take  my  old  cloak  about  me. 


THE   HORATIAN   MODEL   IN 
ENGLISH   VERSE 


BEFORE  discussing — as  I  am  engaged  to  do  this 
morning — the  Horatian  model  in  English  verse, 
give  me  leave,  Gentlemen,  to  delimit  the  ground. 

I  am  not  going  to  discuss  the  many  attempts  to  trans- 
late Horace — to  turn  him  straight  into  English  verse — 
with  their  various  degrees  of  ill-success.  They  are  so 
many,  so  various,  as  to  raise  one's  moral  estimate  of 
Man — improbus  homo,  indomitable  still — against  all 
experience  and  the  advice  of  his  friends — "still  clutching 
the  inviolable  shade!"  The  talents  of  the  late  Mr. 
Gladstone  were  multifarious  and  large  indeed  in  their 
ambit ;  yet  we  may  agree  that  the  Odes  of  Horace  were 
not  haunts  meet  for  him : 

Piscium  et  summS,  genus  haesit  ulmo  .  .  . 
as  he  translated 

The  elm-tree  top  to  fishy  kind 
Gave  harbour  .  .  . 

Or  we  might  paraphrase — in  words  addressed  to  another 
Father  William : 

51 


52  Studies  in  Literature 

And  yet  you  incessantly  stand  on  your  head: 
Do  you  think,  at  your  age,  it  is  right? 


My  own  judgment  would  place  Conington  first  among 
competitors,  with  Sir  Theodore  Martin  second  (surpass- 
ing him  in  occasional  brilliance  but  falling  some  way 
behind  on  the  long  run),  De  Vere  third.  But  these  pre- 
ferences are  idle;  since,  in  the  ordinary  sense,  Horace 
defies  translation. 

Secondly  I  shall  ask  your  leave,  this  morning,  to 
plant  our  Deus  Terminus  yet  nearer — on  this  side  of  the 
Satires  and  Epistles.  I  do  not  deny  that  this  fences  off 
a  deal  of  the  genuine  Horace,  or  pretend  that  we  can 
either  summarise  or  appreciate  the  total  Horace  if  we 
leave  the  Satires,  Epistles  and  Ars  Poetica  out  of  account. 
But  I  shall  take  little  more  than  a  glance  at  them 
because  his  magic  secret  does  not  hide  anywhere  in 
these,  and  as  a  fact  their  style,  in  all  its  essentials,  has 
been  caught  and  transferred  into  modern  literature — 
certainly  into  French  and  English — by  a  number  of 
writers.  I  am  not  talking  of  satire  as  we  commonly 
understand  it  today.  When  we  think  of  satire  we 
think  of  Juvenal  and  of  Swift,  of  Pope,  of  Churchill, 
who  derive  from  Juvenal — not  from  Horace,  save  but 
occasionally  and  then  at  a  remove.  Satire  has  come  to 
connote  something  of  savagery,  of  castigation :  and  I  am 
glad  to  be  quit  of  it  this  morning  because  (to  be  frank) 
it  is  a  form  of  art  that  appeals  to  me  very  faintly,  especi- 
ally in  warm  weather — and  this  not  merely  because  bad 
temper  is  troublesome,  but  for  the  reason  that  anger — 
valuable,  indeed,  now  and  then — is  a  passion  of  which  it 
behoves  all  men  to  be  economical.  To  be  indignant  is 
better  than  to  be  cynical:  to  rage  is  manlier  than  to 
sneer.  Yet  to  be  constitutionally  an  angry  man — to 


Horatian  Model  in  English  Verse      53 

commence  satirist  and  set  up  in  business  as  a  profession- 
ally angry  man — has  always  seemed  to  me,  humanly 
speaking  (and  therefore  artistically),  more  than  a  trifle 
absurd.  Few  will  deny  Juvenal's  force:  yet  after  all 
as  we  open  a  volume  entitled  Sixteen  Satires  of  Juvenal, 
what  are  we  promised  but  this — "Go  to!  I,  Decimus 
Junius  Juvenalis,  propose  to  lose  my  temper  on  sixteen 
several  occasions"?  In  fact,  when  we  have  been 
scolded  through  eleven  or  so  of  these  efforts,  even  such 
a  genius  as  his  is  left  laboriously  flogging  a  dead  horse; 
reduced  to  vituperating  some  obscure  Egyptians  for  an 
alleged  indulgence  in  cannibalism.  Say,  now,  that  you 
pick  up  tomorrow's  newspaper  and  read  that  a  mission- 
ary has  been  eaten  in  the  Friendly  Islands.  You  will 
pay  his  exit  the  tribute  of  a  sigh :  but  the  distance,  and 
anthropology,  will  soften  the  blow.  You  will  not  fly 
into  a  passion.  At  the  most  you  will  write  to  The  Times 
calling  for  a  punitive  visit  by  one  of  His  Majesty's  ships. 
More  likely  you  will  reckon  your  debt  of  humanity 
discharged  by  ingeminating,  after  Sir  Isaac  Newton, 
"O  Diamond,  Diamond,  thou  little  knowest  what  thou 
hast  devoured!" 


II 


But  the  Satires  of  Horace  were  not  satires  in  this 
sense  at  all:  no  more  satires  than  this  week's  Punch 
is  the  London  Charivari.  Satura  literally  translated, 
is  a  "hotch  potch":  in  letters  it  becomes  (as  we  should 
say)  a  "miscellany,"  a  familiar  discourse  upon  this, 
that  and  the  other.  With  a  man  of  Horace's  tempera- 
ment such  sermones  could  not  miss  to  be  urbane, 
gossipy,  sententious  a  little,  wise  a  great  deal,  smooth 
in  address,  pointed  in  wit ;  and  I  dare  to  say  that  these 


54  Studies  in  Literature 

qualities  have  been  achieved  by  his  English  and  French 
descendants.  To  prove  that  the  trick  can  be  done  even 
in  a  straight  translation,  let  me  quote  you  an  example 
from  Conington's  version  of  Epistle  2,  Book  n. — 
Luculli  miles,  etc. : 

A  soldier  of  Lucullus's,  they  say, 

Worn  out  at  night  by  marching  all  the  day, 

Lay  down  to  sleep,  and,  while  at  ease  he  snored, 

Lost  to  a  farthing  all  his  little  hoard. 

This  woke  the  wolf  in  him ; — 'tis  strange  how  keen 

The  teeth  will  grow  with  but  the  tongue  between; — 

Mad  with  the  foe  and  with  himself,  off-hand 

He  stormed  a  treasure-city,  wall'd  and  manned, 

Destroys  the  garrison,  becomes  renowned, 

Gets  decorations  and  two  hundred  pound. 

Soon  after  this  the  general  had  in  view 

To  take  some  fortress — where,  I  never  knew; 

He  singles  out  our  friend,  and  makes  a  speech 

That  e'en  might  drive  a  coward  to  the  breach: 

"Go,  my  fine  fellow!  go  where  valour  calls! 

There's  fame  and  money  too  inside  those  walls." 

"I'm  not  your  man,"  returned  the  rustic  wit: 

"He  makes  a  hero  who  has  lost  his  kit." 

At  Rome  I  had  my  schooling,  and  was  taught 
Achilles'  wrath,  and  all  the  woes  it  brought; 
At  classic  Athens,  where  I  went  erelong, 
I  learnt  to  draw  the  line  'twixt  right  and  wrong, 
And  search  for  truth,  if  so  she  might  be  seen 
In  academic  groves  of  blissful  green; 
But  soon  the  stress  of  civil  strife  removed 
My  adolescence  from  the  scenes  it  loved, 
And  ranged  me  with  a  force  that  could  not  stand 
Before  the  might  of  Caesar's  conquering  hand. 
Then  when  Philippi  turned  me  all  adrift 
A  poor  plucked  fledgling,  for  myself  to  shift, 


Horatian  Model  in  English  Verse      55 

Bereft  of  property,  impaired  of  purse, 
Sheer  penury  drove  me  into  scribbling  verse: 
But  now,  when  times  are  altered,  having  got 
Enough,  thank  Heaven,  at  least  to  boil  my  pot, 
I  were  the  veriest  madman  if  I  chose 
To  write  a  poem  rather  than  to  doze. 

Now  I  would  repeat  here  an  observation  of  New- 
man's which  I  have  quoted  before  to  you,  that  to  invent 
a  style  is  in  itself  a  triumph  of  genius — ' '  It  is  like  cross- 
ing a  country  before  roads  are  made  between  place  and 
place"  and  the  author  who  does  this  deserves  to  be  a 
classic  both  because  of  what  he  does  and  because  he  can 
do  it.  But  this  originality  being  granted  in  the  Horace 
of  the  Satires  and  Epistles,  I  do  think  that  our  English 
translator  has  caught  the  trick  of  the  Latin,  or  very 
nearly.  But  he  derives  it,  of  course,  through  countless 
English  imitators  of  Horace  who  repeat  the  model  at 
short  intervals,  mile  after  mile,  for  two  centuries  and 
more.  Here,  for  example  is  Bishop  Hall  (1574-1656) : 

Late  travelling  along  in  London  way, 

We  met — as  seem'd  by  his  disguised  array — 

A  lusty  courtier,  whose  curled  head 

With  abron  locks  was  fairly  furnished. 

I  him  saluted  in  our  la  vis  wise ; 

He  answers  my  untimely  courtesies. 

His  bonnet  vail'd,  or  ever  he  could  think, 

The  unruly  wind  blows  off  his  periwinke. 

He  'lights,  and  runs,  and  quickly  hath  him  sped 

To  overtake  his  overrunning  head. 

Here  is  the  note  in  Cleveland  (1613-1658) : 

Lord !  what  a  goodly  thing  is  want  of  shirts ! 


56  Studies  in  Literature 

Here  in  Oldham  (1653-1683) : 

Some  think  themselves  exalted  to  the  Sky 
If  they  light  in  some  noble  Family: 
Diet,  an  Horse,  and  thirty  Pounds  a  Year, 
Besides  th'  Advantage  of  his  Lordship's  ear. 

Here  it  is  in  Dry  den : 

Shimei,  whose  youth  did  early  promise  bring 
Of  zeal  to  God  and  hatred  to  his  King, 
Did  wisely  from  expensive  sins  refrain, 
And  never  broke  the  Sabbath,  but  for  gain. 

Here  in  Pope  (of  Dr.  Bentley) : 

Before  them  march'd  that  awful  Aristarch: 
Plough'd  was  his  front  with  many  a  deep  remark. 
His  hat,  which  never  vail'd  to  human  pride, 
Walker  with  reverence  took,  and  laid  aside. 

Still  mark  it  in  Goldsmith : 

In  arguing,  too,  the  Parson  own'd  his  skill, 

For  e'en  though  vanquish'd,  he  could  argue  still; 

While  words  of  learned  length  and  thund'ring  sound 

Amazed  the  gazing  rustics  all  around, 

And  still  they  gaz'd,  and  still  the  wonder  grew 

That  one  small  head  could  carry  all  he  knew  .  .  . 

in  Cowper: 

O  barb'rous!  wouldst  thou  with  a  Gothic  hand 

Pull  down  the  schools?    What!  all  the  schools  i'  th'  land? 

Or  throw  them  up  to  liv'ry  nags  and  grooms, 

Or  turn  them  into  shops  and  auction  rooms?  .  .  . 

even  in  Crabbe : 


Horatian  Model  in  English  Verse      57 

We  had  a  sprightly  nymph.     In  every  town 
Are  some  such  sprights,  who  wander  up  and  down. 
She  had  her  useful  arts,  and  could  contrive 
In  time's  despite,  to  stay  at  twenty-five; — 
"Here  will  I  rest:  move  on,  thou  lying  year,; 
This  is  my  age,  and  I  will  rest  me  here. " 

III 

But  the  truly  magical  secret  of  Horace  lies  nowhere 
in  his  Satires  and  Epistles.  It  lies  in  his  Odes.  There 
haunts  that  witchery  of  style  which,  the  moment  you 
lose  grasp  of  it,  is  dissipated  into  thin  air  and  eludes  your 
concentrated  pursuit — so  that,  like  any  booby  school- 
boy, you  have  your  hands  for  certain  over  the  butterfly, 
and,  opening  them  ever  so  cautiously,  find  it  gone. 
You  know  the  man's  story  (he  has  told  much  of  it  in 
the  lines  of  which  I  have  read  Conington's  paraphrase) 
— born  of  parentage  humble  enough,  but  with  gentle 
instincts;  a  University  man,  of  Athens  and  (as  Mr. 
Verdant  Green  said)  proud  of  the  title — a  brief  spell  of 
military  campaigning,  which  he  did  not  pretend  to 
enjoy,  and  enjoyed  all  the  less  because  his  was  the  losing 
side — then  Rome  again  with  a  brief  experience  of  what 
in  Rome  corresponded  to  Grub  Street — then  a  post  in 
the  Quaestor's  office — put  it  at  a  Treasury  Clerkship — 
then  Maecenas,  patronage,  success,  with  a  small  Sabine 
farm  to  which  he  could  retreat  whenever  his  foot-sole 
tired  of  pavement — a  small  country  house,  frugal  but 
with  good  wine  in  the  cellar,  and  silver,  well-rubbed,  on 
the  table: 

A  bin  of  wine,  a  spice  of  wit, 
A  home  with  lawns  enclosing  it, 
A  living  river  by  the  door, 
A  nightingale  in  the  sycamore, 


58  Studies  in  Literature 

or  their  equivalents.  Horace  enjoyed  these  rural  com- 
forts the  better  that  they  were  tinged  with  a  delicate 
nostalgia  for  the  Town.  He  would  have  said  with 
Laurence  Oliphant 

Whatever  my  mood  is,  I  love  Piccadilly. 

You  know  the  man  too.  If  you  know  him  well,  he  is 
not  a  mere  "man-about-town"  but  so  commonsensical 
at  that  as  to  seem  a  kind  of  glorified  "man-in-the- 
street,"  with  a  touch  of  Browning's  poet,  in  How  it 
strikes  a  Contemporary: 

I  only  knew  one  poet  in  my  life  .  .  . 
He  took  such  cognizance  of  men  and  things  .  .  . 
Yet  stared  at  nobody, — you  stared  at  him, 
And  found,  less  to  your  pleasure  than  surprise, 
He  seemed  to  know  you  and  expect  as  much  .  .  . 

an  Epicurean,  yet  a  patriot  with  firm  views  about 
patriotism ;  a  middle-aged  man  who  had  "lived  "  (as  we 
say)  and  made  no  secret  about  it,  yet  by  luck  or  good 
management  had  so  nursed  his  pleasures  as  to  keep 
a  steady  supply  for  the  advance  of  age,  calling  in 
humour  and  earned  wisdom  to  amuse  when  appetite 
failed. 

You  know,  too,  what  kind  of  poetry  the  man  wrote, 
and  have  had  his  characteristics  labelled  for  you  a  score 
of  times — its  clarity,  its  nicety,  its  felicity  of  phrase,  its 
instinct  for  the  appropriate,  its  delicate  blend  of  the 
scholar  and  the  gentleman.  I  suppose  one  must  add 
"its  faultless  taste  "  since  the  one  trick  of  Horace  which 
offends  me  has  somehow  passed  for  permissible  from 
his  day  to  ours  and  apparently  still  delights  the  audi- 


Horatian  Model  in  English  Verse      59 

ences  of  the  late  Sir  William  Schwenck  Gilbert — I  mean 
the  trick  of  gibing  at  a  woman  because  she  is  growing 
old  and  losing  her  beauty  ("Little  Butter-cup," 
"There  will  be  too  much  of  me  in  the  coming  by-and- 
by"  and  the  like),  a  form  of  merriment  which  I  shall 
continue  to  regard  as  inhumane  until  Death  reconciles 
me  with  the  majority  and  may  be  (but  I  wonder)  with 
enlightenment. 

Critics  there  are,  I  find,  who  deny  the  title  of  "poet/ '  or 
at  any  rate  of ' '  great  poet, ' '  to  Horace,  because  they  miss 
in  him  certain  qualities — moral  earnestness,  aicouBatoTYji;, 
splendour  of  diction,  intensity  of  imagination,  and 
other  abstract  virtues,  with  all  of  which,  though  neces- 
sary to  their  notion  of  a  poet,  Horace  rather  deliberately 
had  nothing  to  do.  I  point  to  one  or  two  of  the  odes, 
say  the  grand  Cleopatra  towards  the  end  of  Book  I,  or 
the  yet  more  celebrated  Regulus  in  Book  in,  and 
observe  that  if  our  critics'  notion  of  poetry  do  not 
include  these,  why  then  it  had  better  be  enlarged  to 
make  room  for  them:  and  further  that  I  do  not  care 
one  obol  (as  neither  would  he — yet  he  knew — exegi 
monumentuni)  what  is  meant  by  "great  poet"  or  even 
"poet"  in  the  abstract,  when  here  you  have  a  man 
whose  verses  have  such  a  diuturnity  of  charm  that,  as 
has  been  said,  "Men  so  wide  apart  in  temperament 
and  spirit  as  Newman  and  Gibbon,  Bossuet  and  Vol- 
taire, Pope  and  Wordsworth,  Thackeray  and  Glad- 
stone, Rabelais  and  Charles  Lamb,  seem  all  to  have 
felt  in  Horace  a  like  attraction  and  to  have  made  of  him 
an  intimate  friend. "  And  I  solemnly  subscribe  to  the 
sentence  that  follows.  "The  magnetic  attraction  to 
which  such  names  as  these  collectively  testify  is  a 
phenomenon  of  sufficient  rarity  to  invite  some  attempt 
to  explain  it. " 


6o  Studies  in  Literature 

IV 

Whatever  the  secret  be,  our  English  poets  have  been 
chasing  it  these  four  hundred  years.  Start,  if  you  will, 
with  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt's  Vixi  puellis: 

They  flee  from  me  that  some  time  did  me  seek, 
With  naked  foot  stalking  within  my  chamber  .  .  . 

Take  Campion's  Integer  Vitae: 

The  man  of  life  upright, 

Whose  guiltless  heart  is  free 
From  all  dishonest  deeds, 

Or  thought  of  vanity  .... 

Take  Wotton  in  a  like  strain : 

How  happy  is  he  born  and  taught 
That  serveth  not  another's  will; 
Whose  armour  is  his  honest  thought, 
And  simple  truth  his  utmost  skill. 

Or,  varying  the  strain,  take  Peele's  Farewell  to  Arms: 

His  golden  locks  Time  hath  to  silver  turn'd  .  .  . 
His  helmet  now  shall  make  a  hive  for  bees. 

Or  Ben  Jonson's 

Still  to  be  neat,  still  to  be  drest, 
As  you  were  going  to  a  feast. 

Take  Herrick's 

Gather  ye  rosebuds  while  ye  may. 

Or  Randolph's  Ode  to  Master  Anthony  Stafford,  to  hasten 
him  into  the  country. 


Horatian  Model  in  English  Verse      61 

Or — to  leave  quoting  by  fragments — let  me  read 
this  one  lyric  of  Campion's,  in  two  stanzas: 

Now  winter  nights  enlarge 

The  number  of  their  hours, 
And  clouds  their  storms  discharge 

Upon  the  airy  towers. 
Let  now  the  chimneys  blaze 

And  cups  o'erflow  with  wine; 
Let  well-tuned  words  amaze 

With  harmony  divine. 
Now  yellow  waxen  lights 

Shall  wait  on  honey  love, 
While  youthful  revels,  masques,  and  courtly  sights 

Sleep's  leaden  spells  remove. 

This  time  doth  well  dispense 

With  lovers'  long  discourse; 
Much  speech  hath  some  defence, 

Though  beauty  no  remorse. 
All  do  not  all  things  well; 

Some  measures  comely  tread, 
Some  knotted  riddles  tell, 

Some  poems  smoothly  read. 
The  summer  hath  his  joys, 

And  winter  his  delights; 
Though  love  and  all  his  pleasures  are  but  toys, 

They  shorten  tedious  nights. 

The  second  stanza  loses  grip  for  a  while;  but  the  whole 
is  right  Horace. 


But  let  us  come  to  more  learned  imitation — learned, 
that  is  to  say  in  the  matter  of  technique.  It  has  been 
pointed  out — first  I  believe  by  our  present  Poet  Laure- 


62  Studies  in  Literature 

ate — that  Milton  in  his  sonnets  was  deliberately 
adapting  the  sonnet-form  to  the  Horatian  ode;  and  the 
suggestion  had  only  to  be  made,  to  convince. 

Lawrence,  of  vertuous  Father  vertuous  Son, 

Now  that  the  Fields  are  dank,  and  ways  are  mire, 
Where  shall  we  sometimes  meet,  and  by  the  fire 

Help  waste  a  sullen  day;  what  may  be  won 

From  the  hard  season  gaining?     Time  will  run 
On  smoother  till  Favonius  re-inspire 
The  frozen  earth ;  and  clothe  in  fresh  attire 

The  Lily  and  Rose,  that  neither  sow'd  nor  spun. 

What  neat  repast  shall  feast  us,  light  and  choice, 
Of  Attick  taste,  with  Wine,  whence  we  may  rise 

To  hear  the  Lute  well  toucht,  or  artful  voice 
Warble  immortal  Notes  and  Tuscan  Ayre? 
He  who  of  those  delights  can  judge,  and  spare 
To  interpose  them  oft,  is  not  unwise. 

Consider  that,  or  the  sonnet  to  Cromwell,  or  that  to 
Cyriack  Skinner: 

To  day  deep  thoughts  resolve  with  me  to  drench 
In  mirth,  that  after  no  repenting  draws; 
Let  Euclid  rest  and  Archimedes  pause, 

And  what  the  Swede  intend,  and  what  the  French. 

To  measure  life,  learn  thou  betimes,  and  know 
Toward  solid  good  what  leads  the  nearest  way; 
For  other  things  mild  Heav'n  a  time  ordains. 

And  disapproves  that  care,  thou  wise  in  show, 
That  with  superfluous  burden  loads  the  day, 
And  when  God  sends  a  cheerful  hour,  refrains. 

I  shall  discuss  the  technique  later:  but  who  can  read 
that  without  exclaiming  Aut  Flaccus  aut  nullus?  Now  I 
proceed  to  point  out  that  just  when  Milton  was  endeav- 
ouring to  break  up  the  old  Petrarchan  sonnet,  and 


Horatian  Model  in  English  Verse      63 

refit  it  to  the  Horatian  ode,  he  was  Cromwell's  Latin 
Secretary  and,  for  comrade  in  the  Secretaryship,  he  had 
another  poet,  Andrew  Marvell,  who  was  at  the  same 
time  working  upon  the  Horatian  model  though  in  a 
different  way:  and  I  have  sometimes  wondered  what 
Cromwell  would  have  said  had  he  happened  in  and 
caught  his  two  secretaries  at  it,  one  at  either  end  of  the 
table.  Now  Andrew  Marvell's  Garden  and  Coy  Mis- 
tress are  Horatian  enough,  as  are  his  later  satires  written 
under  Charles  II.  But  his  Horatian  Ode  upon  Crom- 
well's Return  from  Ireland  has  been  praised  as  the  most 
Horatian  thing  not  written  by  Horace.  Therefore  I 
pause  upon  it,  and  will  quote  its  two  best-known 
stanzas,  those  upon  Charles  I  at  his  execution: 

He  nothing  common  did,  or  mean, 
Upon  that  memorable  scene, 

But  with  his  keener  eye 

The  axe's  edge  did  try; 

Nor  called  the  gods  with  vulgar  spite 
To  vindicate  his  helpless  right; 

But  bowed  his  comely  head 

Down,  as  upon  a  bed. 

What  falls  short,  here,  of  Horace's 

scilicet  invidens 
privata  deduci  superbo 
non  humilis  mulier  triumpho, 

or  of  the  conclusion  of  the  great  Regulus  ode,  where 
the  noble  Roman,  simply  obedient  to  his  honour,  parts 
the  anguished  crowd  that  would  have  stayed  him  at  any 
price,  and  goes  back  to  certain  death  by  torture,  cheer- 
ful as  though  bound  on  a  week-end  release  from  busi- 
ness? 


64  Studies  in  Literature 

Tendens  Venafranos  in  agros 
Aut  Lacedaemonium  Tarentum. 

I  should  consent — and  no  two  words  about  it — with  the 
general  opinion  that  this  "falling  close"  is  one  of  the 
noblest  on  which  ever  poem  concluded,  were  it  not  that 
a  critic  whose  judgment  as  a  rule  I  respect — Dr.  Tyrrell 
of  Dublin1 — has  twice  at  least  and  recently  derided  it 
for  sheer  bathos.  I  hardly  know  where  to  begin  with 
such  a  pronouncement.  Yet  if  Dr.  Tyrrell  be  somehow 
mixing  up  Venafrum  or  Tarentum  with  some  reminisc- 
ences of  cheap  week-end  tickets,  I  would  remind  him 
that  Venafrum  was  a  home  of  Samnite  warriors  (who 
were  among  the  best),  while  the  verse  itself  reminds  him 
of  Tarentum 's  origin;  and  the  noble  associations  of  both 
may  not  improbably  have  crossed  Horace's  mind  as  it 
usually  crosses  his  reader's.  A  great  deal  depends  in 
poetry  on  the  dignity  thus  associated  with  a  name :  the 
'busman's  call  "Penny  all  the  way — Shepherd's  Bush 
to  Marble  Arch!"  would  (as  Dr.  Tyrrell  will  allow)  be 
enhanced  in  allurement  if  beneath  that  Arch  sat  Jove, 
father  of  gods  and  men,  if  that  bush  sheltered  pastoral 
Apollo  with  the  flock  of  Admetus.  But  take  the  verse 
alone,  in  its  own  beauty.  Is  it  possible  that  Dr.  Tyrrell 's 
ear  has  missed  to  hear  the  lovely  tolling  vowels  of ' '  Vena- 
franos in  agros  "  or  missed  the  note  the  even  more  lovely 
cadences  of  vowels  on  which  it  chimes  a  close — "Aut 
Lacedaemonium  Tarentum  "  ? 

Gentlemen,  listen  to  this — though  you  listen  to  no- 
thing else  this  morning.  You  would  write  strongly  and 
melodiously,  so  that  out  of  the  strong  should  come  forth 
sweetness.  Well,  as  the  strength  of  style  rests  on  the 
verb — verbum,  the  word;  as  your  noun  is  but  a  name 

1  Now  valde  deflendus. 


Horatian  Model  in  English  Verse      65 

and  your  adjective  but  an  adjunct  to  a  name,  while 
along  your  verb  runs  the  nerve  of  life;  so,  if  you  would 
write  melodiously,  through  your  vowels  must  the  melody 
run.  What  are  the  consonants,  all  of  them  ?  Why,  as 
their  name  implies,  they  are  assistant  sounds,  naught 
by  themselves.  Some  of  them  are  mute,  and  known  as 
"mutes."  With  others  you  can  make  queer  abortive 
noises.  But  take  any  phrase,  of  verse  or  prose,  re- 
nowned for  beauty : 

O  passi  graviora,  dabit  deus  his  quoque  finem   .    .    . 
Tuba  mirum  spargens  sonum   .    .    . 
In  la  sua  volontade  e  nostra  pace  .    .    . 

Open  the  temple  gates  unto  my  love, 

Open  them  wide  that  she  may  enter  in !   .    .    . 

Bare  ruin'd  choirs,  where  late  the  sweet  birds  sang.  .  .  . 

Where  the  bright  Seraphim  in  burning  row 
Their  loud-uplifted  Angel  trumpets  blow.   .   .  . 

Give  unto  the  Lord  the  glory  due  unto  his  name :  worship 
the  Lord  in  the  beauty  of  holiness. 

The  voice  of  the  Lord  is  upon  the  waters;  the  God  of 
glory  thundereth:  the  Lord  is  upon  many  waters.  .  .  . 

I  say  that  after  allowing  all  you  can  for  the  beautiful 
assistance  of  consonants  you  must  recognise  that  the 
vowels  carry  the  main  music. 

It  amazes  me  therefore  to  find  Stevenson — himself 
a  melodious  writer — in  an  Essay  On  Some  Technical 
Elements  of  Style  playing  about  with  these  secondary 
letters  P,  V,  H,  and  the  rest,  while  almost  totally 
neglecting  the  great  vowels,  and  that  though  he  had 


66  Studies  in  Literature 

this  very  Regulus  ode  in  his  thoughts  at  the  time,  for  he 
quotes  it  with  special  approval.  Yet  what  is  approval 
worth  when  he  talks  of  "these  thundering  verses"? 
What  ? — ' '  thundering ' '  ? — 

Aut  Lacedaemonium  Tarentum. 

No:  I  will  swear,  not  thundering;  or  if  thundering,  but 
as  a  storm  rolling  away  southward  beyond  distant  hills 
and  muted  into  calm. 
Now  in  Marvell's  stanza 

Nor  called  the  gods  with  vulgar  spite 
To  vindicate  his  helpless  right; 

But  bowed  his  comely  head 

Down,  as  upon  a  bed  .    .    . 

with  its  shrill,  spitting,  "spite" — the  sharp  i  and  s  con- 
centrating on  the  labial  p — lowered  at  once  and  dupli- 
cated as  by  echo  in  the  thinner  i  and  softer  sibilant  v 
(spite — to  vind) — followed  by  the  quiet 

But  bowed  his  comely  head 
Down  .    .    . 

(mark  the  full  0's) 

Down,  as  upon  a  bed  .    .    . 

in  Marvell's  stanza  we  do  in  sense  and  sound  get 
the  Horatian  falling  close  almost  perfectly  suggested. 
Yes :  but  not  quite  perfectly,  I  think.  For  why  ?  Be- 
cause the  ear  is  all  the  while  attending  for  the  rhyme — 
"head,"  "bed."  That  is  the  nuisance  with  rhyme: 
it  can  hardly  help  suggesting  the  epigram,  the  clinch, 
the  verse  "brought  off"  with  a  little  note  of  triumph. 
In  rhyme  you  cannot  quite  "cease  upon  the  midnight 


Horatian  Model  in  English  Verse      67 

with  no  pain."  Your  ear  expects  the  correspondent, 
and  "you  are  not  quite  happy  until  you  get  it."  Bear- 
ing this  in  mind,  will  you  turn  to  a  sonnet  of  Milton, 
whose  sonnets  (as  everyone  knows)  are  peculiarly  con- 
structed? Bearing  this  in  mind,  and  that  Milton  was 
labouring  to  make  the  English  sonnet  a  vehicle  for  the 
Horatian  ode,  you  see,  in  a  flash,  two  things : 

(1)  You  see  why  Milton  rejected  the  Shakespearean 
form,  with  its  three  quatrains  and  rhymed  distich  com- 
ing at  the  end  as  a  clou  of  the  whole :  e.g. 

If  this  be  error  and  upon  me  proved, 
I  never  writ,  nor  no  man  ever  loved. 

For  this  epigrammatic  clou,  of  all  things,  Milton  wished 
to  avoid. 

(2)  You  see  why  Milton,  wisely  preferring  the  Petrar- 
chan form,  yet  made  the  curious  innovation  of  running 
octave  and  sestet  together  into  a  continuous  strain.     He 
wanted  to  rid  it  of  all  clinches,  to  ease  the  ear  of  ex- 
pectancy, to  let  the  rhymes  come  unobtrusively — as  if 
they  just  happened.     That  is  why  he  cut,  so  to  speak, 
through  the  cross-trench  and  let  the  verse  run,  on  the 
Horatian  model,  like  a  brook. 

VI 

Just  here,  Gentlemen,  I  find  myself  on  the  verge  of 
preaching  heresy,  and  shall  break  off  for  a  minute  or  so 
to  hazard  some  other  reasons  why  our  poets,  though 
pursuing  it  by  the  pack,  have  never  captured  the  whole 
of  Horace's  secret.  You  will  find  the  Restoration  men 
— Etherege,  Dorset,  Sedley  and  others  in  full  chase. 
But  all  these  men  missed — as  did  Prior  and  his  followers 
in  the  next  age — the  serious  side  of  Horace;  or,  more 


68  Studies  in  Literature 

likely  perhaps,  it  did  not  interest  them.  Yet  it  is  just 
his  real  concern  in  high  affairs  of  state  that  gives  Horace 
his  Roman  gravitas,  a  sense  of  which  weights  our  under- 
standing of  the  man  even  while  he  is  telling  of  his  ban- 
quets or  his  lights-of-love. 

The  merchant,  to  secure  his  treasure, 
Conveys  it  in  a  borrowed  name: 

Euphelia  serves  to  grace  my  measure, 
But  Chloe  is  my  real  flame. 

This  trifling  is  all  very  well:  but,  to  arrive  at  Horace, 
you  must  ballast  your  light  boat  with  such  things  as 

Delicta  majorum  immeritus  lues.    .   .    . 
Or, 

Divis  orte  bonis,  op  time  Romulae 
Gustos  gentis .... 

You  may  demur:  but  I  shall  be  ready,  at  some  future 
occasion,  to  defend  my  firm  belief  that  of  all  our  poets 
the  one  who,  but  for  a  stroke  of  madness,  would  have 
become  our  English  Horace,  was  William  Cowper.  He 
had  the  wit,  with  the  underlying  moral  seriousness. 
You  will  find  almost  everywhere  in  his  poetry  hints  of 
the  Horatian  touch.  Moreover  he  had  originality  along 
with  the  Horatian  sense  of  the  appropriate.  But  dark- 
ness came  down  on  him  and  he  was  lost.  I  am  sure,  at 
any  rate,  that  if  any  one  of  you  wish  to  rival  Horace, 
he  must  not  be  afraid  of  serious  politics,  of  saying— as 
his  conviction  moves  him : 

Asquith,  a  name  to  resound  for  ages !  .    .    . 
Or, 

Asquith,  thou  most  unhappy  man  of  men!  .  .  . 


Horatian  Model  in  English  Verse      69 

Or,  when  the  assault  was  (or  was  not)  intended  upon 
the  province  of  Ulster, 

Carson,  our  chief  of  men,  who  thro'  a  cloud 
Not  of  war  only,  but  detractions  rude.    .    .    . 

Or, 

Carson,  bound  Jephthah  to  thy  Covenant .  .  .  . 

To  employ  a  classical  phrase,  I  will  not  presume  to 
dictate. 

VII 

Time  presses,  and  we  need  not  pursue  this  part  of 
our  enquiry  to  its  end,  because  the  moral  of  it — that 
the  style  is  the  man  himself — may  be  easily  applied. 
Praed  has  Horatian  touches,  but  he  again  is  light,  some- 
times light  to  flimsiness — levitas  cum  levitate.  Landor 
has  all  the  classical  sense  of  form,  and  his  best  I  dare 
almost  aver  to  be  as  good  as  Horace : 

Tanagra !  think  not  I  forget 
Thy  beautifully  storied  streets! 

But  he  is  heir  rather  to  the  Greek  anthologists  than  to 
Augustan  Rome.  In  our  own  day  Mr.  Austin  Dobson 
has  chiselled  out  exquisite  lyrics  in  the  Horatian  mode : 
but  one  feels  that  the  poet's  gaze  all  the  while  is  retro- 
spective, wistful  of  the  past,  a  trifle  distrait  about  cur- 
rent affairs;  that  its  quiz  is  of  a  period,  of  a  bygone  age; 
that  it  follows  the  fair  Gunnings  along  the  Mall : 


The  ladies  of  St.  James's 
Go  swinging  to  the  play 


in  sedan  chairs;  whereas  it  is  a  part  again  of  Horace's 
secret  to  be  for  all  time,  just  because  he  belonged  to  his 


70  Studies  in  Literature 

age  and — curiously  interested  in  it,  perceiving  it  to  be 
full  of  meaning  and  worth  any  man's  interest — caught, 
fixed,  the  flying  hour. 

I  revert,  then,  to  what  is  more  important.  We  can 
compass  the  Horatian  manner;  we  can  compass  the 
Horatian  phrase.  The  Horatian  phrase  is  everywhere 
in  our  best  literature — even  in  the  Book  of  Common 
Prayer.  See  how  it  leaps  out  in  the  Te  Deum,  "When 
thou  hadst  overcome  the  sharpness  of  death."  That  is 
right  Horace.  But  what  of  his  metrical  secret  ?  If  you 
examine  Horace's  work — what  he  did  (which  I  shall  ever 
preach  to  you  as  the  first  business  of  criticism) — one 
thing,  quite  ludicrously  missed  by  a  good  half  of  his 
translators  and  imitators,  leaps  forthwith  to  the  eye. 
He  chose  the  most  tantalisingly  difficult  foreign  metres 
and  with  consummate  skill  tamed  them  to  the  Latin  tongue. 
Once  grasp  this — once  grasp  that  the  secret  of  the  odes 
cannot  at  any  rate  be  dissociated  from  their  metrical 
cunning — once  perceive  that  in  an  Alcaic,  major  Sap- 
phic, fourth  Asclepiad,  fifth  Archilochian,  Horace  is 
weaving  his  graceful  way  through  measures  intricate 
as  any  minuet,  gavotte,  saraband — and  you  will  start 
by  laughing  out  of  court  all  easy  renderings  (say)  in 
flat-footed  octosyllables  such  as  Gladstone's 

What  if  our  ancient  love  awoke 
And  bound  us  with  its  golden  yoke? 
If  auburn  Chloe  I  resign, 
And  Lydia  once  again  be  mine. 

[They  stopped  the  coach  and  all  got  out 
And  in  the  street  they  walked  about : 
But  when  the  rain  began  to  rain 
In  haste  they  all  got  in  again.] 


Horatian  Model  in  English  Verse      71 

In  the  common  anapaestic  measure  I  know  of  but  one 
happy  experiment,  and  that  is  Thackeray's  gay  little 
rendering  of  Persicos  odi: 

But  a  plain  leg  of  mutton,  my  Lucy, 

I  prithee  get  ready  at  three; 
Have  it  smoking,  and  tender  and  juicy, 

And  what  better  meat  can  there  be? 

But  now  listen  to  this,  by  Sir  Theodore  Martin : 

I  myself,  wooed  by  one  that  was  truly  a  jewel, 
In  thraldom  was  held,  which  I  cheerfully  bore 
By  that  vulgar  thing  Myrtale,  tho'  she  was  cruel — 
But  I  reckon  Sir  Theodore  Martin  was  more. 

[The  last  line  is  conjectural.] 

Shall  we  turn  to  such  pretty  measures  as  Tennyson 
employed  in  The  Daisy  and  the  Invitation  to  F.  D. 
Maurice  (noting  by  the  way  their  delicate  metrical 
differences,  especially  in  the  last  line  of  the  stanza :  the 
one 

Of  olive,  aloe,  and  maize  and  vine, 
the  other 

Making  the  little  one  leap  for  joy)  ? 
For  a  sample : 

You'll  have  no  scandal  while  you  dine, 
But  honest  talk  and  wholesome  wine, 

And  only  hear  the  magpie  gossip 
Garrulous  under  a  roof  of  pine. 

That  is  better:  and  good,  too,  is  our  present  laureate's 
Invitation  to  the  Country : 


72  Studies  in  Literature 

And  country  life  I  praise, 
And  lead,  because  I  find 
The  philosophic  mind 

Can  take  no  middle  ways; 

She  will  not  leave  her  love 
To  mix  with  men,  her  art 

Is  all  to  strive  above 
The  crowd,  or  stand  apart. 

VIII 


But  it  is  time  to  return  on  my  steps  and  state,  very 
briefly,  my  heresy;  a  heresy  (you  will  say)  killed  long 
ago  in  Elizabethan  times,  when  Spenser  and  Gabriel 
Harvey,  Sidney,  Campion  and  Daniel  disputed  the 
question  of  rhyme  v.  no-rhyme,  and  the  honours  happily 
rested  with  the  rhymers.  Yes,  most  happily ;  and  yet — 
that  the  narrow  gauge  system  on  our  railways  has  killed 
the  broad  gauge  does  not  prove  to  every  mind  that  the 
narrow  gauge  is  the  better.  And  moreover  rhyme  did 
not  kill  no-rhyme.  On  the  contrary,  were  this  demand 
suddenly  and  dreadfully  sprung  upon  you,  "Of  rhyme 
and  no-rhyme  in  English  Poetry  you  must  today  sur- 
render one  or  the  other — which  shall  it  be?"  you 
would  find  it  a  desperate  choice.  Could  you  abandon 
Paradise  Lost  with  Hamlet,  Macbeth,  Lear — all  the  great 
Elizabethan  drama? 

Well,  as  everybody  knows,  Daniel  had  the  better  in 
the  dialectic,  and,  we  have  to  own,  the  better  cause.  At 
all  events  we  have  plenty  of  reason  to  congratulate  our- 
selves that  Campion's  arguments  were  not  convincing. 
But  as  a  poet  Campion  none  the  less  was  a  better  man 
than  Daniel  and  as  it  were  casually,  by  an  experiment, 
just  by  "taking  and  doing  the  thing,"  as  we  say,  he  had 


Horatian  Model  in  English  Verse      73 

really  proved  this  much  of  his  case — that,  though  we 
cannot  afford  to  lose  rhyme,  there  is  plenty  of  room  for 
the  unrhymed  lyric  too.  Listen  to  this : 

Rose  cheek'd  Laura,  come; 

Sing  thou  smoothly  with  thy  beauty's 
Silent  music,  either  other 

Sweetly  gracing. 

Lovely  forms  do  flow 

From  concent  divinely  framed : 
Heaven  is  music,  and  thy  beauty's 

Birth  is  heavenly. 

These  dull  notes  we  sing 

Discords  need  for  helps  to  grace  them; 
Only  beauty  purely  loving 

Knows  no  discord; 

But  still  moves  delight, 

Like  clear  springs  renew'd  by  flowing, 
Ever  perfect,  ever  in  them- 

-selves  eternal. 


Campion  never  pretended  that  classical  metres  could  be 
exactly  transferred  to  our  English  use :  nay  he  expressly 
denied  it  and  was  at  pains  to  lay  down  lines  on  which 
they  can  be  adapted.  In  this  he  was  undoubtedly  right. 
Attempts  have  been  made  e.g.  to  write  pure  Sapphics  in 
English,  the  most  successful  being  one  by  Doctor  Watts 
who  (though  some  of  you  may  remember  him  as  the 
author  of  "Let  dogs  delight  To  bark  and  bite")  was  a 
considerable  poet,  and  wrote  excellent  Sapphics  on  the 
unpromising  subject  (by  which  I  mean,  unpromising 
for  Sapphics)  of  the  Day  of  Judgment : 


74  Studies  in  Literature 

When  the  fierce  North-wind  with  his  airy  forces 
Rears  up  the  Baltic  to  a  foaming  fury; 
And  the  red  lightning  with  a  storm  of  hail  comes 
Rushing  amain  down. 


Such  shall  the  noise  be,  and  the  wild  disorder 
(If  things  eternal  may  be  like  these  earthly), 
Such  the  dire  terror  when  the  great  Archangel 

Shakes  the  creation; 

Tears  the  strong  pillars  of  the  vault  of  Heaven, 
Breaks  up  old  marble,  the  repose  of  princes, 
Sees  the  graves  open,  and  the  bones  arising, 

Flames  all  about  them. 

He  ends: 

0  may  I  sit  there  when  He  comes  triumphant, 
Dooming  the  nations !  then  ascend  to  glory, 
While  our  Hosannas  all  along  the  passage 

Shout  the  Redeemer. 


This,  in  the  polite  language  of  its  own  generation,  is 
monstrous  fine:  but  I  once  spent  time  and  pains  on 
studying  the  English  Sapphic  and  convinced  myself 
that  our  language  cannot  be  constrained  to  it  naturally 
or  without  a  necessary  loss  beyond  all  likely  gain. 
Nevertheless  I  sometimes  wonder  that  Milton — no 
lover  of  rhyme,  as  his  preface  to  Paradise  Lost  tells  you 
— having  gone  some  way  to  efface  the  impression  of 
rhyme  in  his  Horatian  sonnets,  did  not  experiment 
farther  and  try  working  on  the  Horatian  model  without 
it. 

That  is  my  heresy.     If  any  one  in  this  room  feels 
that  he  has  at  all  the  Horatian  genius  (I  use  the  word  in 


Horatian  Model  in  English  Verse       75 

its  Latin  sense,  not  its  modern)  I  would  commend  to 
him  the  experiment  of  rendering  it  in  delicate  metres 
divorced  from  rhyme,  being  convinced  that  Horace's 
secret,  though  it  may  never  be  captured  in  that  way, 
will  be  captured  in  no  other.  Then  if  he  ask,  ' '  But  have 
you  any  one  concrete  example  to  encourage  me?"  I 
answer,  "Yes,  one:  and  it  is  Collins's  Ode  to  Evening. 
There,  if  anywhere  in  English  poetry,  if  he  seek,  he 
will  find  the  secret  of  Horace's  "falling  close": 

Then  lead,  calm  votaress,  where  some  sheety  lake 
Cheers  the  lone  heath,  or  some  time-hallow'd  pile, 

Or  upland  fallows  grey 

Reflect  its  last  cool  gleam. 

Or  if  chill  blustering  winds,  or  driving  rain, 
Prevent  my  willing  feet,  be  mine  the  hut 

That  from  the  mountain's  side 

Views  wilds  and  swelling  floods, 

And  hamlets  brown,  and  dim-discover'd  spires, 
And  hears  their  simple  bell,  and  marks  o'er  all 

Thy  dewy  fingers  draw 

The  gradual  dusky  veil. 

You  will  not  accept  the  suggestion,  but  I  commend  it 
to  your  thoughts ;  and  so,  for  today,  conclude. 


ON    THE    TERMS    "CLASSICAL 
AND   "ROMANTIC" 


1  PROPOSE  to  say  a  few  words  upon  two  terms — 
"Classical"  and  "Romantic" — with  which  your 
handbooks  to  English  Literature  have  doubtless  by 
this  time  made  you  familiar,  though  you  will  not  find 
them  frequently  mentioned  in  the  masterpieces  of  which 
those  handbooks  are  supposed  to  treat. 

They  are  adjectives,  epithets,  assigning  to  this  and 
that  work  of  art  either  this  or  that  of  two  qualities 
which  (I  shall  not  be  wrong  in  saying)  these  handbooks 
suggest  to  you  as  opposed  to  one  another,  if  not  mu- 
tually exclusive.  Further,  I  shall  not  be  much  amiss, 
perhaps,  in  suggesting  that  you  have  no  very  sharply 
defined  idea  of  how  exactly,  or  exactly  why,  or  exactly 
how  far,  these  qualities  "classical"  and  "romantic" 
stand  opposed  one  to  another,  or  of  how  far  exactly 
they  exclude  one  another.  You  can  say  of  this  paper 
that  it  is  white,  of  the  print  typed  upon  it  that  it  is  black: 
your  sense  accurately  distinguishes  and  you  can  indicate 
with  finger  or  pencil  precisely  where  black  impinges  on 
white. 

But  we  cannot  draw  any  such  line  between  "clas- 
sical" and  "romantic"  work;  since,  to  begin  with,  the 
difference  between  them  is  notional  and  vague  (even  if 
76 


"Classical"  and  " Romantic"          77 

we  admit  a  true  difference,  which  at  this  point  I  do  not) . 
You  have  probably  not  defined  the  difference,  even  to 
yourselves.  You  have  (I  dare  to  assert)  a  positive 
opinion  that  Pope  is  "classical"  and  Blake  "romantic, " 
as  you  have  (I  dare  to  suggest)  a  notion  that  it  means 
something  like  the  difference  between  St.  Paul's  Cathe- 
dral and  Westminster  Abbey.  We  may  get  to  some- 
thing a  little  more  definite  than  that  before  we  have 
done,  this  morning.  But  for  the  moment  maybe  I  do 
few  of  you  a  grave  injustice  in  assuming  that  you  are 
more  confident  of  "knowing  what  you  mean"  by  the 
epithets  "classical"  and  "romantic"  than  of  your  ability 
to  determinate  their  difference  in  words:  and  that  if 
suddenly  presented  with  some  line  or  passage  of  litera- 
ture, admittedly  beautiful,  and  halted  with  the  demand 
"Is  this  classical?  or  is  it  romantic?"  you  might  con- 
ceivably find  yourself  yet  more  diffident.  Say,  for 
example,  you  were  thus  held  up  to  stand  and  deliver 
yourself  upon  Hamlet's  dying  speech  to  Horatio: 

If  thou  didst  ever  hold  me  in  thy  heart, 
Absent  thee  from  felicity  awhile 
And  in  this  harsh  world  draw  thy  breath  in  pain 
To  tell  my  story  .    .    . 

or  upon  this  from  Lycidas: 

Together  both,  ere  the  high  lawns  appeared 
Under  the  opening  eyelids  of  the  Moon, 
We  drove  a-field   .    .    . 

or  upon  the  last  words  of  Beatrice  Cenci : 

Give  yourself  no  unnecessary  pain, 

My  dear  Lord  Cardinal.     Here,  Mother,  tie 

My  girdle  for  me,  and  bind  up  this  hair 


78  Studies  in  Literature 

In  any  simple  knot;  ay,  that  does  well. 

And  yours  I  see  is  coming  down.     How  often 

Have  we  done  this  for  one  another;  now 

We  shall  not  do  it  any  more.     My  Lord, 

We  are  quite  ready.     Well,  'tis  very  well .... 

I  say  that  I  may  do  you  no  grave  injustice  in  supposing 
that,  confronted  with  those  famous  passages  and  having 
it  suddenly  demanded  of  you,  "Is  this  classical?  or 
romantic  ? — Under  which  king,  Besonian  ?  speak,  or  die ! " 
— you  would  hesitate,  might  be  inclined  to  temporise, 
might  even  save  your  life  by  admitting  that,  all  things 
considered,  there  was  a  little  bit  of  both  about  them. 
Well,  that  is  a  useful  admission !  It  concedes  that  the 
two  epithets  describe  things  which  may  be  contraries, 
but  are  at  any  rate  not  contradictories,  are  not  mutually 
exclusive,  may  meet  in  the  same  work,  may  blend  in  a 
line  or  phrase  even,  and  so  as  to  be  hard  to  distinguish. 

II 

But  let  us  go  a  little  further.  These  epithets — 
"romantic"  and  "classical" — vague  and  indeterminate 
as  we  have  found  their  frontiers  to  be,  are  still  epithets, 
adjectives  by  which  we  qualify  real  things.  We  say, 
for  example,  of  The  Faerie  Queene,  that  it  is  "romantic," 
of  Samson  Agonistes  that  it  is  "classical"  and,  The 
Faerie  Queene  and  Samson  Agonistes  being  things,  good 
nouns  concrete  and  substantive,  poems  actually  printed 
in  ink  upon  paper,  we  can  bring  our  epithets  to  the  test. 
They  are  not  epithets  like  "blue"  or  "wine-dark"  (of 
the  sea),  like  "acid"  (of  the  taste  of  lemon),  like  "deaf- 
ening" (of  the  explosion  of  a  shell),  like  "penetrating" 
(of  the  effect  of  a  bullet) .  They  are  not  epithets  of  sense, 
but  of  concept.  They  belong  to  the  realm  of  opinion. 


"Classical"  and  "Romantic"          79 

If  you  say  of  a  bullet  that  it  is  penetrating,  you  appeal 
to  the  evidence  of  sense,  and  the  description  cannot  be 
denied.  If  you  say  of  the  German  behaviour  in  Belgium 
that  it  has  been  beastly,  you  appeal  to  opinion:  and  a 
German  will  say  it  has  been  humane,  not  godlike. 

Still  your  epithet — "romantic"  or  "classical" — is, 
however  indeterminate,  referable  to  a  real  thing,  and 
can  be  corrected  by  it. 

But  when  we  go  a  step  further  yet,  and  convert  our 
epithets  of  opinion — "classical,"  "romantic" — into  ab- 
stract nouns — "classicism,"  "romanticism" — I  would 
point  out  to  you  with  all  the  solemnity  at  my  com- 
mand that  we  are  at  once  hopelessly  lost :  lost,  because 
we  have  advanced  a  vague  concept  to  the  pretence 
of  being  a  thing;  hopelessly  lost,  because  we  have  re- 
moved our  concept  out  of  range  of  the  thing;  which 
is  not  only  what  matters,  but  the  one  and  single  test 
of  our  secondary  notions.  "The  play's  the  thing." 
Hamlet,  Lycidas  or  The  Cenci  is  the  thing.  Shakespeare, 
Milton,  Shelley  did  not  write  "classicism"  or  "roman- 
ticism." They  wrote  Hamlet,  Lycidas,  The  Cenci. 


Ill 


Gentlemen,  I  would  I  could  persuade  you  to  remem- 
ber that  you  are  English,  and  to  go  always  for  the  thing, 
casting  out  of  your  vocabulary  all  such  words  as 
"tendencies,"  "influences,"  "revivals,"  "revolts." 
"Tendencies"  did  not  write  The  Canterbury  Tales; 
Geoffrey  Chaucer  wrote  them.  "Influences"  did  not 
make  The  Faerie  Queene;  Edmund  Spenser  made  it :  as 
a  man  called  Ben  Jonson  wrote  The  Alchemist,  a  man 
called  Sheridan  wrote  The  Rivals,  a  man  called  Meredith 
wrote  The  Egoist. 


8o  Studies  in  Literature 

Now  it  is  the  weakness  of  Germans  in  criticism  that, 
not  having  a  literature  of  their  own  to  rank  with  the 
great,  but  being  endowed  as  a  race  with  an  unusual  tal- 
ent for  philosophising,  they  habitually  think  and  talk  of 
a  literary  masterpiece — which  is  a  work  of  art  achieved 
in  the  way  of  practice — as  though  it  were  a  product, 
or  at  any  rate  a  by-product,  of  philosophy,  producible 
by  the  methods  of  philosophy.  And  the  reason,  I  be- 
lieve, why  the  Germans  have  never  had,  nor  are  likely 
to  have,  a  literature  comparable  with  the  best  does  not 
lie  in  the  uncouthness  of  their  language.  Our  English 
tongue  was  uncouth  enough  until,  in  their  varied  ways 
Chaucer  and  Wyat  and  Spenser;  the  early  translators 
and  Tindale;  Sidney,  Hooker;  Milton,  Waller  and 
Dryden;  Browne  and  Clarendon  and  Berkeley;  Pope, 
Addison,  Swift,  Gibbon,  Johnson  (to  go  no  further) 
practised  and  polished  it.  But  these  men,  and  specially, 
of  course,  the  earlier  ones,  saw  the  difficulty  of  their  task 
as  a  condition  of  overcoming  it.  You  can  scarcely 
open  a  preface  of  the  old  translators,  or  of  an  early 
collection  of  Songs  and  Sonnets,  but  your  eye  falls  on 
some  passage  of  pathetic  apology  for  our  unmusical  and 
barbarous  tongue,  in  which  nevertheless  the  poor  fellow 
affirms  that  he  has  done  his  best 

To  find  out  what  you  cannot  do, 
And  then — to  go  and  do  it.    .    .  . 

That  was  the  way  of  the  men  who  made  English  Litera- 
ture exquisite. 

Now  the  Germans  would  seem  never,  or  rarely,  to 
have  felt  that  humility  of  mind  before  the  great  master- 
pieces, that  prostration  in  worship,  that  questioning 
and  almost  hopeless  self-distrust,  out  of  which,  by 


" Classical"  and  "Romantic"          81 

some  divine  desire  of  emulation  yet  persistent  in  him, 
the  artist  is  raised  to  win  the  crown.  Yes,  I  do  assure 
you,  Gentlemen,  that  George  Herbert's  loveliest  lyric, 
though  it  speak  of  holier  things,  may  be  applied  in  par- 
able, and  scarcely  with  exaggeration,  to  the  attitude  of 
the  true  artist  before  his  art.  Let  me  remind  you  of 
it: 

Love  bade  me  welcome;  yet  my  soul  drew  back, 

Guilty  of  dust  and  sin. 
But  quick-eyed  Love,  observing  me  grow  slack 

From  my  first  entrance  in, 
Drew  nearer  to  me,  sweetly  questioning 

If  I  lack'd  anything. 

"A  guest,"  I  answer'd,  "worthy  to  be  here": 

Love  said,  "You  shall  be  he. " 
"I  the  unkind,  ungrateful?     Ah,  my  dear, 

I  cannot  look  on  thee. " 
Love  took  my  hand,  and  smiling  did  reply, 

"Who  made  the  eyes  but  I?" 

"Truth,  Lord,  but  I  have  marr'd  them:  let  my  shame 

Go  where  it  doth  deserve. " 
"And  know  you  not, "  says  Love,  "Who  bore  the  blame? " 

"My  dear,  then  I  will  serve." 
"You  must  sit  down, "  says  Love,  "and  taste  my  meat. " 

So  I  did  sit  and  eat. 


IV 


Apparently  (I  say)  the  Germans  feel  no  such  humility 
of  soul  before  other  peoples'  great  literature:  and  by 
consequence — it  may  seem  a  strange  thing  to  assert  of 
them — they  don't  take  pains  enough;  they  don't  take 


82  Studies  in  Literature 

the  trouble  because  they  don't  see  it.  They  are  at  ease 
in  other  peoples'  Sions:  but  they  cannot  build  one,  and 
moreover  it  is  not  Sion.  Literature  being  literature, 
and  philosophy  philosophy,  you  can  never  understand 
or  account  for  literature — still  less  can  you  produce 
literature — by  considering  it  in  terms  of  philosophy; 
that  is,  by  being  wise  about  it  in  a  category  to  which  it 
does  not  happen  to  belong. 

So  when  a  German,  cultivating  his  own  bent,  bemuses 
himself  with  a  theory  that  Wordsworth  (we  will  say) 
wrote  naturalism,  or  that  naturalism  wrote  Wordsworth, 
it  matters  which  even  less  than  it  matters  to  us  what 
the  German  thinks  he  means.  For  we  know  that  what 
Wordsworth  wrote  was  Tintern  Abbey,  while  what 
naturalism  wrote  was  nothing  at  all:  for  it  never 
existed  but  as  a  concept  in  somebody's  mind,  an 
abstract  notion.  God  made  man  in  His  image.  Ger- 
mans make  generalisations  in  theirs.  That  is  all,  and 
that  is  just  the  difference. 

To  men  who  really  practise  writing  as  an  Art — to 
every  true  man  of  letters  in  France,  in  England,  in 
Russia,  in  Belgium — to  an  Anatole  France,  to  a  Ros- 
tand, to  a  Rolland,  to  a  Thomas  Hardy,  to  a  Maxim 
Gorky,  to  a  Maurice  Maeterlinck,  these  abstract 
notions  are  about  as  useful  as  the  wind  in  the  next 
street;  and  the  more  you  practise  good  actual  writing 
the  more  composedly  you  will  ignore  them. 

But  they  do  confuse  and  nullify  criticism  all  over 
Europe,  even  among  men  of  strong  mind  who  happen 
to  be  critics  only,  and  have  never  undergone  the  disci- 
pline of  creative  writing.  For  example — yesterday  I 
took  down  a  volume  by  that  man  of  really  powerful 
mind,  Dr.  George  Brandes.  I  opened  it  quite  at  ran- 
dom, and  read: 


"Classical"  and  "Romantic"          83 

The  strongest  tendency  even  of  works  like  Byron's  Don 
Juan  and  Shelley's  Cenci  .  .  . 

Do  you  know  any  works  "like"  these,  by  the  way? 

The  strongest  tendency  even  of  works  like  Byron's  Don 
Juan  and  Shelley's  Genci  is  in  reality  Naturalism.  In  other 
words  Naturalism  is  so  powerful  in  England  that  it  per- 
meates Coleridge's  Romantic  supernaturalism,  Words- 
worth's Anglican  orthodoxy,  Shelley's  atheistic  spiritualism, 
Byron's  revolutionary  liberalism  .  .  . 

-ism,  -ism,  -ism!  "Omm-jective  and  summ-jective ! " 
I  open  at  another  page,  again  at  haphazard: 

Keats's  poetry  is  the  most  fragrant  flower  of  English 
Naturalism.  Before  he  appeared,  this  Naturalism  had  had 
a  long  period  of  continuous  growth.  Its  active  principle 
had  been  evolved  by  Wordsworth  .  .  .  Coleridge  provided 
it  with  the  support  of  a  philosophy  of  nature  which  had  a 
strong  resemblance  to  Schelling's.  In  Scott  it  assumes  the 
highly  successful  form  of  a  study  of  men,  manners  and 
scenery,  inspired  by  patriotism,  by  interest  in  history,  and 
by  a  wonderful  appreciation  of  the  significance  of  race. 

At  this  point  I  began  to  yearn  for  five  minutes  of  Jane 
Austen,  and  wondered  idly  what  sort  of  figure  she  could 
be  made  to  cut  in  this  galley.  But,  being  too  listless  to 
search,  I  turned  back  to  the  Introduction  and  read : 

It  is  my  intention  to  trace  in  the  poetry  of  England  of 
the  first  decades  of  this  century  the  course  of  the  strong, 
deep,  pregnant  current  in  the  intellectual  life  of  the 
country,  which,  sweeping  away  the  classic  forms  and  con- 
ventions, produces  a  Naturalism  dominating  the  whole  of 
literature,  which  from  Naturalism  leads  to  Radicalism,  from 
revolt  against  traditional  convention  in  literature  to  vig- 


84  Studies  in  Literature 

orous  rebellion  against  religious  and  political  reaction.  .  .  . 
Though  the  connection  between  these  authors  and  schools  is 
not  self-evident,  but  only  discernible  to  the  understanding 
critical  eye,  yet  the  period  has  its  unity,  and  the  picture 
it  presents,  though  a  many-coloured  restless  one,  is  a  coher- 
ent composition,  the  work  of  the  great  artist,  history. 


Is  not  that  fine  ?  Everything  ending  in  ' ' ion ' '  permeat- 
ing everything  that  ends  in  "ance"  or  "ity"  or  "ism, " 
fighting  it  out  like  queer  aquatic  monsters  in  a  tank,  all 
subdued  finally  to  a  coherent  com-pos-it-ion  by  a  wave 
of  the  pen  in  the  hand  of  that  great  personi-fi-cat-ion 
history!  Gentlemen,  tell  yourselves  that  these  foolish 
abstractions  never  did  any  of  these  foolish  things. 
"The  great  artist,  history ! ' '  Call  up  your  courage  and 
say  with  Betsey  Prig  that  you  "don't  believe  there  is  no 
sich  person. "  Cure  yourselves,  if  you  would  be  either 
artists  or  critics,  of  this  trick  of  personifying  inanities. 
"My  brethren,"  said  a  clergyman  addicted  to  this 
foible,  "as  we  feast  and  revel,  catering  for  the  inner 
man,  Septuagesima  creeps  up  to  our  elbow,  and  pluck- 
ing us  by  the  sleeve  whispers,  '  Lent  is  near ! " '  Beware, 
I  beg  you,  of  such  personifying  of  what  isn't  there, 
whether  it  be  of  "the  great  artist,  history,"  or  of  that 
minatory  virgin,  Septuagesima. 

But  you  will  find  (thanks  to  the  servility  of  English 
professors)  this  German  trick  of  philosophising  art  and 
fobbing  off  abstractions  for  things  at  its  most  rampant, 
at  its  most  dangerous,  in  your  literary  handbooks,  which, 
for  convenience'  sake,  obliterate  all  that  is  vital  to  the 
work  you  ought  to  be  studying,  to  chatter  about 
'  'schools, "  "  influences, "  "  revivals, "  "  revolts, "  "  tend- 
encies, "  "reactions. " 

Come:  shall  we  make  such  a  Handbook  of  English 


"Classical"  and  " Romantic"          85 

Literature  together?    It  can  be  done,  and  completed  in 
five  minutes  or  so :  as  thus — 

A  Short  History  of  English  Literature 

Roman  occupation  of  Britain.  450  years.  Reason  why 
no  results. 

Extirpation  of  colonists  by  sturdy  Anglo-Saxon  race. 
Beowulf.  "Book  of  our  origins " :  "our  Genesis " :  "not  one 
word  about  England  in  the  poem. "  No  school  of  Beowulf. 
Surprise  at  this. 

Story  of  Csedmon,  a  cowherd.  No  school  of  Caedmon. 
Surprise  at  this. 

Rise  of  Anglo-Saxon  Prose  under  Alfred.  Orosius. 
Boethius.  Collapse  of  Anglo-Saxon  Prose.  Surprise  at 
this.  Conjectural  explanation. 

Norman  Conquest.  Consequent  explicable  invasion  of 
Norman-French  influence.  Layamon's  Brut.  Wace. 
Geoffrey  of  Monmouth.  Sturdy  persistence  of  Anglo- 
Saxon.  Significance  of  Piers  Plowman. 

Tendencies  producing  Chaucer's  debt  to  Italian  influ- 
ences, to  French  influences,  to  other  influences.  Chaucer's 
inflexions,  Chaucer's  word-endings.  Influence  of  Chaucer. 
Scottish  Chaucerians;  English  school  of  Chaucer.  Decline 
of  Chaucerian  tradition.  General  tendency  (shared  by  us) 
to  look  everywhere  but  in  the  right  place.  Lydgate  and 
Hoccleve  writing  bad  poetry,  but  improving  Middle  English 
endings.  "Transition  period"  (which  means  we  haven't 
much  to  say  just  hereabout). 

Italianate  Revival:  French  Pleiad:  Influence  producing 
Wyat  and  Surrey :  School  of  Wyat  and  Surrey.  The  Renais- 
sance, The  New  Learning:  Columbus  discovers  America. 
Surprises  at  this.  Sir  Thomas  More  at  home  in  Chelsea. 
Simultaneous  rise  of  the  Drama.  Evolution  of  the  Miracle 
Play.  The  Miracle  Play  superseded  by  the  Morality. 
Evolution  of  the  Drama.  Evolution  of  Blank  Verse. 
Shakespeare — his  Comedies — his  Tragedies — his  Historical 


86  Studies  in  Literature 

plays — his  indebtedness  to  his  times — his  many-sidedness — 
his  Will — his  second-best  bed — his  romanticism.  Classic- 
ism of  Ben  Jonson.  Reaction  (metaphysical)  led  by 
Donne.  The  mystical  school.  The  Platonical  school. 
Milton's  indebtedness  to  the  Copernican  system.  Tend- 
ency of  Waller,  Dryden,  Pope.  Decline  of  metaphysical 
school.  Rise  of  the  classical  school.  Tyranny  of  the 
Pamphlet,  rise  of  the  Essay,  rise  of  the  Novel.  Tendency 
to  write  like  Gray,  or  Collins:  tendency  to  admire  Dr. 
Johnson:  tendency  not  to  admire  Dr.  Johnson  so  much — 
tendency  to  make  up  on  the  swings  what  you  have  lost  on 
the  roundabouts:  tendency  to  be  Cowper  or  Crabbe:  all 
these  tendencies  culminating  in  Romantic  revolt.  Natural- 
ism (alias  Wordsworth),  mysticism  (alias  Coleridge),  deism 
(alias  Shelley),  the  revolutionary  spirit  (alias  Byron),  and 
sensuous  naturalism  (alias  Keats).  Exhaustion  of  tenden- 
cies. Reform  Act  of  1832 — its  devastating  influence  on 
English  Literature,  and  especially  on  its  study  in  Cam- 
bridge. Albeit  we  have  heard  it  rumoured  that  in  a  later 
generation  Tennyson,  Browning,  Carlyle,  Ruskin,  Arnold, 
Morris  and  others  made  a  spirited  attempt  to  revive  the 
interplay  of  those  tendencies  and  reactions  which  we 
have  been  considering,  at  this  point  we  down  the  curtain 
and  count  the  takings. 


Now  this  method  of  considering  literature  as  the  pro- 
duct not  of  successive  men  of  genius  and  talent,  but  of 
abstract  "influences"  and  "tendencies"  divisible  in 
periods  and  capable  of  being  studied  in  compartments, 
has  various  vices,  mostly  consequent  upon  its  being 
untrue. 

For  one,  it  gets  you  into  a  habit  of  regarding  literature 
as  a  compost  of  blocks  or  slabs  laid  down  in  segments 
with  dabs  of  editorial  cement  to  fill  up  the  chinks :  and 


" Classical*'  and  " Romantic"          87 

concurrently  (this  is  the  mischief)  you  lose  your  sense  of 
it  as  an  organic  living  thing  with  delicate,  often  infini- 
tesimal, roots,  thrown  out  this  way  and  that  way  and 
every  way,  feeding  it  all  the  while  by  suction  from  the 
brain  and  blood  of  living  men :  and  so  (last  and  worst) 
you  arrive  at  losing  faith,  which  is  the  substance  of 
things  hoped  for.  I  do  not  believe  in  youth  that  is 
content  to  abide  in  the  past:  for  I  am  very  sure  it  pre- 
pares for  itself  a  desert  prospect  against  the  day  when  it 
shall  have  children  of  its  own. 

For  another  vice,  this  method  constantly  throws  the 
story  for  you  into  a  false  perspective;  a  perspective 
which  belies  now  the  order  of  time  and  anon  the  degrees 
of  right  importance.  Doubtless  there  are,  have  been, 
always  will  be,  fashions  in  writing  as  in  most  of  man's 
activities ;  but  in  the  minds  and  feelings  of  men — litera- 
ture being  ever  personal — they  so  overlap,  so  interlace, 
so  blend,  dispart,  reunite  their  forces,  that  if,  copying 
the  method  of  science  and  the  manner  of  Euclid,  you 
superimpose  the  compartment  ABC  upon  the  compart- 
ment DEF,  you  are  bound  to  be  misled,  logically  and 
even  chronologically. 

For  an  example,  take  these  lines,  upon  a  certain 
translator : 

That  servile  path  thou  nobly  dost  decline 
Of  tracing  word  by  word,  and  line  by  line. 
Those  are  the  laboured  births  of  slavish  brains, 
Not  the  effects  of  poetry,  but  pains; 

Cheap  vulgar  arts,  whose  narrowness  affords 
No  flight  for  thoughts,  but  poorly  sticks  at  words. 
A  new  and  nobler  way  thou  dost  pursue, 
To  make  translations  and  translators  too. 
They  but  preserve  the  ashes,  thou  the  flame, 
True  to  his  sense,  but  truer  to  his  fame. 


88  Studies  in  Literature 

"Classicism, "  I  hear  you  say.  "Age  of  Pope:  finished 
couplet,  balanced  antithesis — the  whole  armoury  of 
tricks. "  Sirs,  they  were  written  by  Sir  John  Denham, 
who  was  born  in  1615,  more  than  seventy  years  before 
Pope,  and  died  almost  twenty  years  before  Pope  was 
born  or  thought  of. 


VI 


But  come — What  do  you  understand  by  the  words 
"classical"  and  "classicism"?  I  gather  from  the 
essays  you  bring  me  that  they  mean  something  you 
certainly  dislike  (being  children  of  your  age,  as  we  all 
are  or  alas !  have  been  ),  and  that  you  incline  to  lay  your 
grievance  at  the  door  of  Alexander  Pope.  You  dislike 
it  so  much  that  when  we  read  Gray  or  Collins  together 
and  I  pause  say  at  these  lines  To  Evening: 

O  nymph  reserved,  while  now  the  bright-hair'd  sun 
Sits  in  yon  western  tent,  whose  cloudy  skirts, 

With  brede  ethereal  wove, 

O'erhang  his  wavy  bed  .  .  . 

there  ensues  some  such  dialogue  as  this: 

The  Tutor  pauses  on  the  verse  and  muses,  half  to  himself, 

"Lovely!  and  lovelier  every  time." 
"Yes,  isn't  it?"  the  Pupil  agrees  ardently. 
' '  And — classical  ? ' ' 
The  Pupil  hesitates.     "Well— no— I  shouldn't   say    that. 

It  seems  to  me  that  there's  a  feeling  for  Nature  about 

it. "     Pause. 
Tutor  (encouragingly).     "Yes.    I  seem  to  have  observed 

that. " 


" Classical"  and  "Romantic"          89 

Pupil  (brightly).  "It  seems  to  me  just  to  illustrate  what 
Mr.  So-and-So  said  the  other  day,  that  long  before  we 
come  to  the  Romantic  Revival — under  Wordsworth 
and  Coleridge  and — yes,  Scott  of  course " 

Tutor.     "Yes.     Yes." 

Pupil.  "There  were  bound  to  be  stirrings — 'gropings, ' 
as  he  put  it.  Of  course  I  know  that  Collins  calls 
Evening  a  'nymph. ' " 

Tutor.  "Let  us  look  on  the  bright  side  of  things.  Brown- 
ing— one  of  your  romantics  by  the  way — would  have 
called  her  a  'numph. ' " 

Pupil.  "And  then  again  he  speaks  of  the  'bright-hair'd 
sun'  and — dolefully — I  suppose  that's  classical:  some- 
thing out  of  Homer,  no  doubt.  But," — with  reviving 
courage — "But  anyhow,  Sir,  you'll  admit  it's  different 
from  Pope?" 

Tutor.     "With  all  my  heart. " 

Pupil's  brow  clears.     He  has  established  the  point. 


VII 


You,  who  have  to  listen,  term  in  and  term  out,  to  all 
this  talk  about ' '  classicism ' '  and  ' '  classicality ' ' — do  you 
seriously  suppose  that  Pope  was  a  classical  writer? 

I  am  not  going  to  define  the  term  "classical "  for  you, 
just  at  this  moment.  I  prefer  to  oppose  thing  to  thing. 
You  will  perhaps  allow  that  Homer,  at  any  rate,  was 
a  classical  writer.  As  between  him  and  Pope,  Homer 
has — I  am,  perhaps,  not  extravagant  in  supposing — the 
first  call  on  that  title. 

Well,  when  Homer,  having  to  tell  how  Odysseus, 
shipwrecked  and  far-spent  with  swimming,  wins  to 
shore  and  drags  himself,  naked,  to  hide  in  the  bushes 
just  as  Nausicaa — the  king's  daughter  of  the  country — 
drives  down  to  the  beach  with  her  maidens,  to  wash 


9O  Studies  in  Literature 

the  court  linen  in  a  stream  close  by,  he  tells  the  business 
thus: 

Then  they  took  the  clothes  from  the  waggon,  and  carry- 
ing them  to  the  dark  water,  trod  them  in  pits  briskly,  in 
rivalry.  Then,  after  they  had  washed  and  cleansed  away 
all  the  stains,  they  spread  everything  out  in  order  on  the 
foreshore,  even  where  the  sea,  beating  on  the  coast,  had 
washed  the  pebbles  clean.  Then,  having  bathed  and 
anointed  themselves  with  olive  oil,  they  ate  their  mid-day 
meal  on  the  river  bank,  waiting  till  the  clothes  should  dry 
in  the  sun's  rays.  And  anon,  having  finished  their  meal,  the 
maidens  and  the  Princess,  they  fell  to  playing  at  ball,  casting 
away  their  veils,  and  among  them  white-armed  Nausicaa 
sang  the  song  which  led  the  game. 

Could  anything  be  simpler,  more  direct,  more  classical  ? 
(We  are  approaching  a  definition.)  But  now  turn  to 
Pope's  version — or  rather,  to  Brome's,  which  Pope  ad- 
mired so  much  that  he  incorporated  it  in  his  rendering 
of  the  Odyssey: 

Then  emulous  the  royal  robes  they  lave, 
And  plunge  the  vestures  in  the  cleansing  wave 
(The  vestures  cleansed  o'erspread  the  shelly  sand, 
Their  snowy  lustre  whitens  all  the  strand) ; 
Then  with  a  short  repast  relieve  their  toil, 
And  o'er  their  limbs  diffuse  ambrosial  oil; 
And  while  the  robes  imbibe  the  solar  ray, 
O'er  the  green  mead  the  sporting  virgins  play 
(Their  shining  veils  unbound).     Along  the  skies, 
Toss'd  and  retoss'd,  the  ball  incessant  flies. 
They  sport,  they  feast;  Nausicaa  lifts  her  voice, 
And,  warbling  sweet,  makes  earth  and  heaven  rejoice. 

Can  you  not  see  at  once  that  if  Homer's  narrative  be 
classical,  Pope  (or  Brome)  has  induced  something  upon 


"Classical"  and  "Romantic"          91 

it  which  changes  its  nature?  something  extraneous, 
ornamental,  fantastic — 

And  while  the  robes  imbibe  the  solar  ray — 

something  more  alien  from  true  classical  than  almost 
anything  you  can  find  in  the  wildest  romanticist — as 
you  will  call  him  ? 

VIII 

When  you  apply  the  word  "classical"  or  the  word 
"classicism"  to  such  tawdry  overlay  as  I  have  quoted, 
are  you  not — are  your  professional  instructors  not — 
committing  the  first  of  literary  offences,  that  of  per- 
verting the  sense  of  words?  Do  you  not — do  not 
your  professional  instructors — by  this  use  of  the  word 
' '  classical ' '  mean  in  fact ' '  conventional ' ' — a  word  which 
contradicts  almost  every  notion  that  can  be  even 
remotely  associated  with  the  classics?  Your  professors 
and  compilers  of  little  handbooks  may  not  go  about 
like  Theophile  Gautier,  wearing  crimson  waistcoats :  but 
beneath  whatever  waistcosts  they  wear  they  carry 
a  stupidity  which  was  never  Gautier's,  in  his  most 
intoxicated  moments. 

Pope  sealed  a  fashion.  It  was  an  artificial  manner 
of  writing,  as  far  removed  from  the  practice  of  the  men 
we  call  classical  authors  as  any  manner  of  writing  could 
well  be.  Sophocles  or  Virgil  or  Dante  would  have 
shuddered  at  it.  Still  he  set  up  a  fashion  under  which 
it  became  unpoetical — that  is,  was  esteemed  unpoetical 
— to  call  the  moon  the  moon  without  adding  "sole 
regent  of  the  night, "  or  to  talk  of  drying  clothes:  to  be 
garments  worthy  of  poetry  they  had  to  "imbibe  the 
solar  ray." 


92  Studies  in  Literature 

But  are  we  sure  that  our  poets,  having  repudiated 
Pope,  are  not  practising  very  similar  fooleries  in  our 
own  year  of  grace?  The  inventions  of  one  age  are 
always  in  process  of  becoming  the  conventions,  the 
tyrants,  of  the  next.  Listen  to  this,  from  Francis 
Thompson's  Essay  on  Shelley;  and  mark  you,  it  is 
written  of  our  own  day: 

There  is,  in  fact,  a  certain  band  of  words,  the  Praetorian 
cohorts  of  poetry,  whose  prescriptive  aid  is  invoked  by  every 
aspirant  to  the  poetical  purple,  and  without  whose  prescrip- 
tive aid  none  dares  aspire  to  the  poetical  purple;  against 
these  it  is  time  some  banner  should  be  raised. 

And  he  goes  on : 

It  is  at  any  rate  curious  to  note  that  the  literary  revolu- 
tion against  the  despotic  diction  of  Pope  seems  issuing, 
like  political  revolutions,  in  a  despotism  of  its  own  making. 

If  our  teachers  persist  in  labelling  Pope  and  his  imi- 
tators as  "classical, "  let  us  cheerfully  claim  the  bulk  of 
Greek  and  Roman  literature  as  "romantic"  and  have 
done  with  it.  Why  not?  Do  you  postulate,  for 
romantic  writing,  glamour  and  magic,  adventures  on 
' '  perilous  seas  in  faery  lands  forlorn ' '  ?  Very  well ;  then 
I  exhibit  this  same  Odyssey  to  you,  with  its  isle  of  Circe, 

where  that  ^Eaean  isle  forgets  the  main, 

its  garden-court  of  Phaeacia,  its  wonderlands  of  the  Cy- 
clops, the  Sirens,  the  Lotus-eaters,  its  scene,  a  moment 
ago  related,  of  the  princess  playing  at  ball  with  her 
maidens  on  the  strand;  or  I  exhibit  the  marvellous  tale 


"Classical"  and  "Romantic"          93 

of  Cupid  and  Psyche,  parent  of  a  hundred  fairy-tales  dis- 
persed throughout  the  world  (Beauty  and  the  Beast  for 
one). 

Or  is  it  passion  you  demand  of  romance?  I  exhibit 
the  passionate  verses  of  Sappho,  preserved  for  us  by 
Longinus,  beginning 

oq  6e<riaiv 


or  a  speech  of  Phaedra,  or  Catullus's  lyric  of  Acme 
and  Septimius. 

Is  it  pathos  ?  —  utter  pathos  ?  I  exhibit  to  you  Priam 
on  his  knees,  kissing  the  hand  that  has  murdered  his 
son;  Helen  on  the  wall;  Andromache  bidding  farewell 
to  her  husband  at  the  gate,  her  boy  kicking  and  crowing 
on  her  arm  at  sight  of  his  father's  nodding  plume;  and 
again  that  last  glimpse  Virgil  gives  of  her,  in  slavery, 
returning  from  vows  paid  to  the  dead  —  of  her  that  was 
"Hectoris  Andromache.  " 

Is  it  any  sense  of  predestinate  doom  fulfilled?  I 
refer  you  to  the  last  stand  of  the  Sicilian  expedition  in 
Thucydides.  Or  is  it  a  general  sense  of  the  woe,  the  tears, 
the  frailty,  the  transience  inherent  in  all  human  things? 
A  dozen  passages  from  Virgil  might  be  quoted. 

I  think,  if  you  will  look  into  "classicism"  and 
"romanticism"  for  yourselves,  with  your  own  open 
eyes,  you  will  find  —  though  the  whole  pother  about 
their  difference  amounts  to  nothing  that  need  trouble 
a  healthy  man  —  it  amounts  to  this:  some  men  have 
naturally  a  sense  of  form  stronger  than  their  sense  of 
colour:  some  men  have  a  sense  of  colour  stronger  than 
their  sense  of  form. 

In  proportion  as  they  indulge  their  proclivities  or 


94  Studies  in  Literature 

neglect  to  discipline  them,  one  man  will  be  a  classical, 
the  other  a  romantic,  writer.  At  their  utmost,  one  will 
be  a  dull  formalist,  the  other  a  frantic  dauber.  I  truly 
believe  there  is  not  much  more  to  be  said. 

I  conclude  by  reciting  to  you  two  compositions  by 
opposing  which  you  may  summarise  for  yourselves  all 
that  I  have  been  saying  today. 

The  first  is  a  Table  of  Contents  of  a  volume  by 
Doctor  George  Brandes  (Main  Currents  in  Nineteenth 
Century  Literature,  vol.  iv). 


Common  Characteristics  of  the  Period 

National  Characteristics 

The  Political  Background 

The  Beginnings  of  Naturalism 

Strength  and  Sincerity  of  the  Love  of  Nature 

Rural  Life  and  its  Poetry 

Naturalistic  Romanticism 

The  Lake  School's  Conception  of  Liberty 

The  Lake  School's  Oriental  Romanticism 

Historical  Naturalism 

All-embracing  Sensuousness 

The  Poetry  of  Irish  Opposition  and  Revolt 

Erotic  Lyric  Poetry 

The  British  Spirit  of  Freedom 

Republican  Humanism 

Radical  Naturalism 

Byron:  the  Passionate  Personality 

Byron:  the  Passionate  Personality  (continued) 

Byron:  his  Self-absorption 

Byron:  the  Revolutionary  Spirit 

Comic  and  Tragic  Realism 

Culmination  of  Naturalism 

Byron's  Death 

Conclusion 


"Classical"  and  "Romantic"          95 

What  shall  I  oppose  to  this  ?  Something  quite  simple, 
something  you  all  know  by  heart,  yet  something  so 
lovely  that  it  never  can  be  hackneyed. 

Ah  what  avails  the  sceptered  race, 

Ah  what  the  form  divine ! 
When  every  virtue,  every  grace! 

Rose  Aylmer,  all  were  thine. 
Rose  Aylmer,  whom  these  wakeful  eyes 

May  weep,  but  never  see, 
A  night  of  memories  and  of  sighs 

I  consecrate  to  thee. 

Is  that  classical?  It  is  as  classical  as  anything  in 
Catullus.  Is  that  romantic?  Yes,  I  think  it  is  also 
romantic. 

But  what  matters  either?  It  is  the  pure  loveliness 
of  it  that  alone  should  concern  you. 

All  things  considered,  I  advise  that  it  may  help  our 
minds  to  earn  an  honest  living  if  we  dismiss  the  terms 
"classical"  and  "romantic"  out  of  our  vocabulary  for 
a  while. 


SOME  SEVENTEENTH 
CENTURY   POETS 

I.    JOHN  DONNE 

I 

WHEN  Izaak  Walton  first  published  that  gem  of 
biography,  his  Life  of  Dr.  John  Donne — now  one 
in  a  casket  of  five  of  his  carving — it  was  to  introduce  a 
volume  of  his  adored  master's  Sermons:  and  he  prefaced 
it  with  a  modest  account  of  how  he  had  first  but  col- 
lected materials  for  Sir  Henry  Wotton,  betwixt  whom 
and  Donne  "there  was  so  mutual  a  knowledge,  and  such 
friendship  contracted  in  their  youth,  as  nothing  but 
death  could  force  a  separation,"  But  Wotton  died, 
with  the  projected  Life  unwritten. 

When  I  heard  that  sad  news  [Walton  continues],  and 
heard  also  that  these  Sermons  were  to  be  printed,  and  want 
the  Author's  life,  which  I  thought  to  be  very  remarkable: 
indignation  or  grief  (indeed  I  know  not  which)  transported 
me  so  far,  that  I  reviewed  my  forsaken  collections.  .  .  .  And 
if  I  shall  now  be  demanded,  as  once  Pompey's  poor  bond- 
man was: — (the  grateful  wretch  had  been  left  alone  on  the 
sea-shore,  with  the  forsaken  dead  body  of  his  once  glorious 
lord  and  master ;  and  was  then  gathering  the  scattered  pieces 
of  an  old  broken  boat,  to  make  a  funeral  pile  to  burn  it, 
96 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets  97 

which  was  the  custom  of  the  Romans) — "Who  art  thou 
that  alone  hast  the  honour  to  bury  the  body  of  Pompey  the 
Great?"  so,  who  am  I  that  do  thus  officiously  set  the 
Author's  memory  on  fire  ?  I  hope  the  question  will  prove  to 
have  in  it  more  of  wonder  than  disdain.  .  .  . 

And  if  the  Author's  glorious  spirit,  which  now  is  in 
heaven,  can  have  the  leisure  to  look  down  and  see  me,  the 
poorest,  the  meanest  of  all  his  friends,  in  the  midst  of  his 
officious  duty,  confident  I  am  that  he  will  not  disdain  this 
well-meant  sacrifice  to  his  memory:  for,  whilst  his  con- 
versation made  me  and  many  others  happy  below,  I  know 
his  humility  and  gentleness  were  then  eminent;  and,  I  have 
heard  divines  say,  those  virtues  which  were  but  sparks  upon 
earth,  become  great  and  glorious  flames  in  heaven. 

Now  of  encomiums  upon  the  dead,  as  of  entries  in 
hotel  visitors'  books,  you  may  have  (with  me)  found 
it  observable  that  qualifications  tend  to  disappear.  But 
the  poetical  elegies  upon  Dr.  Donne  do  by  their  mass 
(they  fill  twenty-five  pages  in  Dr.  Grierson's  great 
edition)  as  by  their  writers'  eminence  in  various  stations 
of  life  (Bishop  King,  Browne  of  Tavistock,  Edward 
Hyde — possibly  the  great  Earl  of  Clarendon — Walton 
himself,  Thomas  Carew  the  poet  and  courtier,  Lucius 
Gary,  Endymion  Porter,  Sidney  Godolphin,  are  among 
the  signatory  authors)  convey  that  the  men  of  his  time 
who  themselves  counted  accounted  him  a  very  great 
man  indeed. 

And  truly  he  was  a  great  man ;  yes,  and  is  one  of  the 
greatest  figures  in  English  literature,  albeit  perhaps  the 
worst  understood :  one  of  the  tribe  of  strong  generative 
giants  in  which — whether  we  like  them  or  not,  and 
whether  or  not  we  know  why — we  have  to  reckon  (for 
examples)  Ben  Jonson,  John  Dryden,  Samuel  Johnson ; 
giants  whose  stature  we  recognise  albeit  we  cannot 


98  Studies  in  Literature 

measure  it  by  their  writings,  which  sometimes  dis- 
appoint and  not  seldom  fatigue  us ;  giants  of  whom  we 
still  feel,  after  reading  Sejanus  or  Absalom  and  Achito- 
phel,  or  Rasselas,  that  their  worth  is  somehow  known 
although  their  height  be  not  taken. 

Donne,  I  dare  to  say,  if  we  range  him  up  with  that 
tall  three,  stands  an  easy  compeer.  What  is  more,  his 
work  does  not  disappoint — if  we  know  where  to  look 
for  it.  He  wrote  some  of  the  most  magnificent  and 
astounding  pages  in  our  literature,  if  we  know  where  to 
look  for  them.  We  may  not  call  them,  though  unparal- 
leled, absolutely  beautiful:  there  is  nothing  absolute 
in  Donne  but  his  greatness  and  his  manhood.  He  is 
Demiourgos — a  swart  smith  at  the  forge,  beating  out 
things  worthy  of  the  heavenly  city:  and  he  cares  not 
what  costly  stuff  he  casts  into  the  furnace  so  that  he 
hammer  out  a  paving-stone,  or  it  may  be  a  primrose 
for  it :  and,  for  the  sake  of  a  primrose  great  fiery  masses 
will  hurtle  up  out  of  Etna.  Also  one  has  to  peer  through 
the  smoke  to  discern  what  the  artificer,  too  intent  to 
help  you,  has  there  on  the  anvil.  It  may  be  just  a  prim- 
rose or  it  may  be  a  whole  length  of  celestial  wall.  He, 
absorbed,  sees  only  on  the  anvil  a  part  of  his  vision. 

II 

But  first  let  me  tell  a  little  of  this  extraordinary  man : 
not  enough  to  absolve  you  of  the  duty  and  delight  of 
reading  about  him  in  Walton:  just  enough  to  preface 
the  remarks  I  shall  offer  upon  his  work  this  morning, 
and  thereafter  upon  the  work  of  his  followers. 

John  Donne  was  born  in  London,  in  the  parish  of 
St.  Olave,  Bread  Street,  in  the  year  1573.  His  father, 
a  prosperous  ironmonger  of  the  city  of  London,  and 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets  99 

well  descended,  died  when  the  boy  was  about  three  years 
old,  leaving  a  widow  and  six  children.  The  mother  was 
a  devout  and  uncompromising  Roman  Catholic;  which 
explains  why  the  boy  John,  after  tuition  at  home,  went 
up  at  twelve  (with  a  younger  brother,  Henry,  aged 
eleven)  and  was  entered  at  Hart  Hall,  now  Hertford 
College,  in  Oxford:  for  certain  alleged  proselytising 
activities  of  the  Jesuits  had  hurried  the  government 
into  making  an  order  that  all  students  admitted  to 
Oxford  must  take  the  Oath  of  Supremacy,  the  crucial 
test  of  loyalty  to  the  Crown  and  to  the  Reformed 
Church  of  England;  an  oath  not  enforced,  however, 
upon  boys  under  sixteen.  So  John  and  Henry  dodged 
it  by  going  up  at  twelve  and  eleven.  In  those  days 
there  were  no  Rhodes  scholars:  and  I  should  imagine 
that,  under  this  rule — which  apparently  did  not  apply 
to  Cambridge,  Cambridge  would  have  had  consistently 
the  better  of  things  in  athletics — had  there  been  any. 
But  there  were  not. 

Walton  says  that  at  fourteen  or  thereabouts  he  was 
"transplanted" — which  seems  a  good  term  —  from 
Oxford  to  Cambridge,  "that  he  might  receive  nourish- 
ment from  both  soils."  I  regret  to  tell  you  that  no 
evidence  for  this,  save  Walton's,  is  discoverable,  unless 
it  be  internal  evidence.  Walton  says  that  at  Oxford 
they  avowed  the  age  to  have  brought  forth  another 
Pico  Mirandola:  that  at  Cambridge  he  was  a  most 
laborious  student,  often  changing  his  studies  but 
endeavouring  to  take  no  degree.  Plus  qa  change,  plus 
c'est  la  meme  chose. 

It  is  probable  that,  after  leaving  Oxford,  he  travelled 
for  a  while.  At  any  rate  we  find  him,  at  seventeen  or 
so,  admitted  to  Lincoln's  Inn  and  living  in  London.  His 
mother,  anxious  for  his  faith,  surrounded  him  there  with 


ioo  Studies  in  Literature 

tutors  who  (according  to  Walton)  under  cover  of  the 
mathematics  and  other  liberal  sciences  were  advised  to 
instil  into  him  particular  principles  of  the  Romish 
Church.  Donne,  being  of  a  detached  mind — detached, 
but  extraordinarily  eager — set  himself  to  read  both 
sides  of  the  question  with  all  his  might.  The  end  was 
that  he  became  a  passionate,  yet  tolerant,  Church  of 
England  man.  Meantime  his  brother  Henry — the 
same  that  had  entered  with  him  at  Hart  Hall — had 
fallen  under  suspicion  of  disloyal  commerce  with  the 
Jesuit  fathers,  and  was  thrown  into  the  Clink  for 
harbouring  Harrington,  a  seminary  priest,  tracked  to  his 
chambers  in  Thavies'  Inn  and  there  arrested.  Harring- 
ton was  hurried  to  trial  and  hanged  at  Tyburn.  Henry 
Donne  contracted  gaol  fever  and  died,  after  a  few 
weeks'  imprisonment. 

It  may  have  been  in  prudence,  being  under  suspicion, 
that  in  1596,  John  cleared  from  London  and  joined  in 
the  Earl  of  Essex's  famous  expedition  to  Cadiz.  Quite 
as  likely  it  was  to  avoid  the  scandal  of  more  worldly 
transgressions:  for  his  poems  (and  Ben  Jonson  tells  us 
that  he  wrote  all  his  best  pieces  of  verse  before  twenty- 
five)  tell  us  autobiographically  of  wild  living  and  licen- 
tious wooing: 

Th'  expense  of  Spirit  in  a  waste  of  shame  .  .  . 

and  of  shamelessness,  we  may  add.  They  exhibit  him 
as  a  genuine  heir  of  the  Renaissance,  insatiable  alike  in 
carnal  and  intellectual  curiosity:  mad  to  possess,  and, 
having  possessed,  violent  in  reaction,  crueller  even  than 
Horace  to  his  castaways,  then  even  more  cruelly,  cynic- 
ally, cold  in  analysing  the  ashes  of  disgust: 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets  101 

Th '  expense  of  Spirit  in  a  waste  of  shame 
Is  lust  in  action;  and,  till  action,  lust 
Is  perjured,  murderous,  bloody,  full  of  blame, 
Savage,  extreme,  rude,  cruel,  not  to  trust; 
Enjoy'd  no  sooner  but  despised  straight; 
Past  reason  hunted ;  and,  no  sooner  had, 
Past  reason  hated;  as  a  s wallow' d  bait 
On  purpose  laid  to  make  the  taker  mad: 
Mad  in  pursuit,  and  in  possession  so; 
Had,  having,  and  in  quest  to  have,  extreme; 
A  bliss  in  proof:  and,  proved,  a  very  woe; 
Before,  a  joy  proposed;  behind,  a  dream.  .  .  . 

Setting  forth  with  Essex,  the  youth,  already  famous 
for  gifts  and  learning,  writes  an  Elegie  of  farewell  to  a 
lady  with  whom  he  had  had  an  intrigue.  This  is  the 
sort  of  thing: 

Was't  not  enough,  that  thou  didst  hazard  us 

To  paths  in  love  so  dark,  so  dangerous : 

And  those  so  ambush'd  round  with  household  spies, 

And  over  all,  thy  husbands  to  wring  eyes  .  .  . 

and  about  the  same  time  he  was  writing  The  Curse  on 
his  mistress  and  the  man  who  succeeds  him,  which  (as 
Andrew  Lang  said  justly)  "far  outdoes  the  Epodes  of 
Horace  in  cold  ferocity. "  Or  this: 

Love,  any  devile  else  but  you, 

Would  for  a  given  soule  give  something  too. 


Or  this: 


If  thou  beest  borne  to  strange  sights, 

Things  invisible  to  see, 
Ride  ten  thousand  daies  and  nights, 

Till  age  snow  white  haires  on  thee, 


102  Studies  in  Literature 

Thou,  when  thou  retorn'st,  wilt  tell  mee 
All  strange  wonders  that  befell  thee, 

And  sweare 

No  where 
Lives  a  woman  true,  and  faire. 

If  thou  findst  one,  let  mee  know, 
Such  a  Pilgrimage  were  sweet; 
Yet  doe  not,  I  would  not  goe, 

Though  at  next  doore  wee  might  meet. 
Though  shee  were  true,  when  you  met  her, 
And  last,  till  you  write  your  letter, 
Yet  shee 
Will  bee 
False,  ere  I  come,  to  two,  or  three. 

Now  in  two  more  short  extracts  watch  the  fierce  con- 
tempt withering  down  into  worse  cynicism : 

Now  thou  hast  lov'd  me  one  whole  day, 
To  morrow,  when  thou  leav'st,  what  wilt  thou  say? 
Wilt  thou  then  Antedate  some  new  made  vow? 

And  say  that  now 

We  are  not  just  those  persons,  which  we  were? 
Or,  that  oathes  made  in  reverentiall  feare 
Of  Love,  and  his  wrath,  any  may  forswear?  .  .  . 
Vaine  lunatique,  against  these  scapes  I  could 
Dispute,  and  conquer,  if  I  would, 

Which  I  abstaine  to  doe, 
For  by  to  morrow,  I  may  thinke  so  too. 
Last: 

Thus  I  reclaim'd  my  buzzard  love,  to  flye 
And  what,  and  when,  and  how  and  where  I  chuse; 
Now  negligent  of  sport  I  lye, 
And  now  as  other  Falc'ners  use, 
I  spring  a  mistress,  sweare,  write,  sigh  and  weepe: 
And  the  game  kill'd,  or  lost,  goe  talke,  and  sleepe  .  .  , 

and  there  is  worse — far  worse — than  that. 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets          103 

Donne  shared  the  triumph  of  the  Cadiz  exploit  with 
a  number  of  young  gentlemen  who  had  sailed  with 
Essex  as  volunteers.  Its  impudent  success  so  enraged 
the  king  of  Spain  that  he  started  preparing  a  second 
Armada.  To  forestall  this,  Elizabeth  fitted  out  a  grand 
fleet  under  Essex,  Howard  and  Ralegh;  and  Donne 
sailed  with  it.  A  storm  (described  by  him  in  a  dull 
poem,  praised  by  a  modern  critic  as  "most  vivid"  in 
pictures  of  nature  and  the  sea;  actually  as  full  of  both, 
or  of  either,  as  this  room)  drove  the  ships — it  was  real 
enough  for  that — back  to  Plymouth.  They  weighed 
again,  but  in  so  damaged  a  condition  that,  after  a 
coasting  raid,  the  larger  foray  was  abandoned  for  a 
dash  on  the  Azores  to  intercept  the  Spanish  plate-ships 
returning  from  America.  This  enterprise  (known  as 
the  "Islands  Expedition")  fell  to  pieces  through  bicker- 
ings between  Essex  and  Ralegh,  and  the  fleet  trailed  a 
broken  wing  home  in  the  autumn  of  1597.  Walton  tells 
us  that,  just  after  this,  Donne  visited  Italy  and  Spain 
(presumably  on  minor  errands  of  diplomacy)  and  that 
he  designed  to  visit  the  Holy  Land.  "But  at  his  being 
in  the  furthest  parts  of  Italy,  the  disappointment  of 
company,  or  of  a  safe  convoy,  or  the  uncertainty  of 
returns  of  money  into  those  remote  parts,  denied  him 
that  happiness :  which  he  did  often  occasionally  mention 
with  a  deploration. "  It  is  pretty  certain  he  had 
wasted  his  patrimony  in  these  wanderings. 

We  pursue  with  Walton : 

Not  long  after  his  return  into  England,  that  exemplary 
pattern  of  gravity  and  wisdom,  the  Lord  Elsemore  [Elles- 
mere],  then  Keeper  of  the  Great  Seal,  the  Lord  Chancellor  of 
England,  taking  notice  of  his  learning,  languages,  and  other 
abilities,  and  much  affecting  his  person  and  behaviour,  took 


104  Studies  in  Literature 

him  to  be  his  Chief  Secretary;  supposing  and  intending  it  to 
be  an  introduction  to  some  more  weighty  employment  in  the 
State. 


But  here  fate  interposed.  The  Chancellor's  wife  had  a 
niece,  Anna,  daughter  of  Sir  George  More,  Lieutenant 
of  the  Tower,  and  kept  her  as  frequent  visitor  and 
attendant.  This  young  lady  of  sixteen  and  the  hand- 
some young  secretary  were  thrown  much  together,  read 
be  Dks  together — 

Galeotto  fu  il  libro  e  chi  lo  scrisse. 

The  pair  fell  in  love,  secretly  plighted  troth,  and  were 
clandestinely  married  (1601).  The  father's  wrath, 
when  he  discovered  it,  was  fierce,  even  "frenetical. " 
He  not  only  procured  the  young  husband's  dismissal 
from  the  Chancellor's  service,  but  had  him  committed 
to  prison  with  two  friends,  Samuel  and  Christopher 
Brooke  (both  poets  by  the  way,  and  Samuel  destined 
to  become  Master  of  Trinity),  who  had  abetted  the  love 
affair.  Almost  as  quickly  as  in  a  comedy  the  choleric 
father  relented,  procured  the  bridegroom's  enlargement, 
gave  the  young  couple  his  blessing  (with  none  of  his 
money,  however,  to  back  it)  and,  not  to  do  forgiveness 
by  halves,  begged  the  Chancellor  to  reconsider  his 
dismissal  of  so  commendable  a  young  secretary.  To 
which  that  exemplary  pattern  of  gravity  and  wisdom 
replied  "that  though  he  was  unfeignedly  sorry  for  what 
he  had  done,  yet  it  was  inconsistent  with  his  place  and 
credit,  to  discharge  and  re-admit  servants  at  the  request 
of  passionate  petitioners. " 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets  105 

III 

Thus  Donne  found  himself  cast  on  the  world,  with 
the  obligation  to  provide  for  a  wife  he  had  dangerously 
won  and  passionately  adored.  After  vicissitudes  (and 
much  fending  for  a  fast-growing  family),  he  found 
employ  with  Sir  Robert  Drury  of  Hawsted,  Suffolk,  one 
of  the  wealthiest  men  in  England;  whose  only  child, 
a  daughter,  had  died  at  the  age  of  sixteen.  The  rich 
poor  parents  applied  to  Donne  to  write  her  epitaph. 
Donne  not  only  did  so,  but  followed  it  up  with  that 
strangest  of  poems,  The  Progresse  of  the  Soule.  It  was 
the  first  of  his  writings  to  see  print.  His  earlier  licen- 
tious poems  he  would  gladly  have  suppressed,  had  it 
been  possible.  They  were  never  published  during  his 
lifetime:  but  copies  in  MS. — for  his  reputation  was 
already  the  talk  of  the  town — had  blown  everywhere,  in 
court  and  throughout  London. 

He  would  gladly  have  suppressed  them  because  his 
religious  convictions  were  steadily  deepening — or  rather 
lifting  him  to  a  mystical  exaltation — but  more  because 
the  wandering  bark  of  his  love  had  found  a  polestar  in 
his  most  adored  wife.  True  and  ten  times  true  as  are 
Burns's  words  of  dissipated  passion : 

I  waive  the  quantum  o'  the  sin, 

The  hazard  of  concealing; 
But,  och!  it  hardens  a'  within, 

And  petrifies  the  feeling !  .  .  . 

Donne  was  one  of  the  few  who,  out  of  that  curse  hold 
fire  enough  to  revive  the  flame — 

I  have  been  faithful  to  thee,  Cynara,  in  my  fashion — 
and  burn  up  past  sins  on  the  altar  of  a  single  devotion. 


106  Studies  in  Literature 

It  was  in  Drury's  employ,  on  an  embassy  to  France, 
that  Donne,  in  Paris,  was  visited  by  the  apparition 
reported  by  Walton  and  always  worthy  to  be  men- 
tioned because  in  this  man  it  undoubtedly  deepened 
the  mysticism  so  important  to  the  rest  of  our  story: 
the  vision  of  his  wife  passing  twice  by  him  "with  her 
hair  hanging  about  her  shoulders,  and  a  dead  child  in  her 
arms:  .  .  .  and  am  as  sure,"  said  he,  telling  it  to 
Drury,  "that  at  her  second  appearing  she  stopped,  and 
looked  me  in  the  face,  and  vanished. "  Sir  Robert  was 
so  far  shaken  by  Donne's  earnestness  that 


he  immediately  sent  a  servant  [home]  to  Drury  House,  with 
a  charge  to  hasten  back,  and  bring  him  word,  whether  Mrs. 
Donne  were  alive:  and,  if  alive,  in  what  condition  she  was  as 
to  her  health.  The  twelfth  day  the  messenger  returned  with 
this  account — That  he  found  and  left  Mrs.  Donne  very  sad, 
and  sick  in  her  bed;  and  that,  after  a  long  and  dangerous 
labour,  she  had  been  delivered  of  a  dead  child.  And,  upon 
examination,  the  abortion  proved  to  be  the  same  day,  and 
about  the  very  hour,  that  Mr.  Donne  affirmed  he  saw  her 
pass  by  him  in  his  chamber. 


Donne  returned  to  England,  where  Drury  housed  him 
with  his  rapidly  increasing  family.  He  became  adviser 
to  the  Earl  of  Somerset ;  but  yet  lacked  preferment  pro- 
portionate to  his  merits,  when  in  1615,  at  the  persuasion 
of  King  James  himself,  he  took  Holy  Orders.  Then 
preferment  came,  as  it  not  seldom  comes,  to  a  man  past 
enjoying  it.  Donne,  at  any  rate,  had  but  a  short  while 
to  share  the  gratification  with  his  wife.  She  died  in 
1617  and  was  buried  in  St.  Clement  Danes.  Here  is  a 
part  of  the  epitaph : 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets          107 

Annae. 


Quod  hoc  saxum  fari  jussit 

Ipse  prae  dolore  infans 
Maritus  (miserrimum  dictu)  alim 

Charae  charus 

Cineribus  cineres  spondet  suos 
Novo  matrimonio  (annual  Deus) 
hoc  loco  sociandos 
Joannes  Donne 

In  1621  King  James  made  him  Dean  of  St.  Paul's. 
He  was  now  forty-eight,  the  most  famous  preacher  in 
London,  and  the  most  solitary,  melancholy  man. 


IV 


There  is  where  you  shall  seek  for  the  great  Donne, 
the  real  Donne:  not  in  his  verse,  into  which  posterity 
is  constantly  betrayed,  but  in  his  Sermons,  which 
contain  (as  I  hold)  the  most  magnificent  prose  ever 
uttered  from  an  English  pulpit,  if  not  the  most  magni- 
ficent prose  ever  spoken  in  our  tongue.  I  read  you  a 
passage  this  day  fortnight:  and  I  hope  some  day  to 
speak  to  you  of  Donne  and  Andrewes,  Hall,  Fuller, 
Jeremy  Taylor  and  others  of  the  Great  Age  of  the 
Pulpit.  Let  me  today  stammer  out  to  you,  for  evi- 
dence, two  short  passages;  and  ask  you  to  imagine  his 
wonderful  voice  (by  all  men's  consent,  wonderful) 
ringing  them  forth  under  the  roof  of  St.  Paul's — the  old 
St.  Paul's. 

(i)  First,  for  a  specimen  of  his  lighter  controversial 
style,  which  I  may  call  his  skirmishing  style.  And  here, 
by  the  way,  if  there  be  any  present  of  the  Catholic 


io8  Studies  in  Literature 

Church  of  Rome,  let  him  not  take  offence  at  that  which 
I  present  merely  as  a  specimen.  Donne's  was  an  age  of 
controversy:  and  if  we  pretend  amiably  there  was  no 
such  thing,  we  emasculate  our  understanding  of  his  time 
and  of  the  men  who  lived  in  it.  And  moreover  I  truly 
believe  the  passage  will  not  bruise  any  man's  ears;  and 
— yet  moreover — I  engage  me,  when  dealing  with 
writers  of  "the  old  profession"  amply  to  redeem  the 
balance. 

Well,  then,  Donne  is  speaking  of  supplications  ad- 
dressed to  saints.  He  quotes  Justin  Martyr's  saying 
that  it  is  a  strange  thing  men  should  "pray  to  Escu- 
lapius  or  to  Apollo  for  health"  when  they  may  as 
easily  pray  to  the  masters  who  taught  them  all  they 
know  of  physic;  and  he  goes  on: 

Why  should  I  pray  to  St.  George  for  victory,  when  I  may 
go  to  the  Lord  of  Hosts,  Almighty  God  Himself;  or  consult 
with  a  Serjeant,  or  corporal,  when  I  may  go  to  the  general? 
Or  to  another  saint  for  peace,  when  I  may  go  to  the  Prince 
of  Peace  Christ  Jesus  ?  Why  should  I  pray  to  Saint  Nicho- 
las for  a  fair  passage  at  sea,  when  He  that  rebuked  the  storm 
is  nearer  me  than  St.  Nicholas?  Why  should  I  pray  to  St. 
Antony  for  my  hogs,  when  he  that  gave  the  devil  leave  to 
drown  the  Gergesens  whole  herd  of  hoggs,  did  not  do  that 
by  St.  Antony's  leave,  nor  by  putting  a  caveat  or  prae-non- 
obstante  in  his  monopoly  of  preserving  hogs?  I  know  not 
where  to  find  St.  Petronilla  when  I  have  an  ague,  nor  St. 
Apollonia  when  I  have  the  tooth-ache,  nor  St.  Liberius  when 
I  have  the  stone.  I  know  not  whether  they  can  hear  me  in 
heaven,  or  no.  Our  adversaries  will  not  say  that  all  saints 
in  heaven  hear  all  that  is  said  on  earth.  I  know  not  whether 
they  be  in  heaven  or  no :  our  adversaries  will  not  say  that 
the  Pope  may  not  err  in  a  matter  of  fact,  and  so  may  canon- 
ise a  traitor  for  a  saint.  I  know  not  whether  those  saints 
were  ever  upon  earth  or  no :  our  adversaries  will  not  say  that 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets          109 

all  their  legends  were  really,  historically  true,  but  that 
many  of  them  were  holy,  but  yet  symbolical  inventions. 
.  .  .  I  know  my  Redeemer  liveth,  and  I  know  where  he  is; 
and  no  man  knows  where  he  is  not. 

(2)  For  a  more  solemn  passage  I  choose  this  famous 
one  on  Jezebel : 

The  ashes  of  an  oak  in  the  chimney  are  no  epitaph  of  that 
oak,  to  tell  me  how  high  or  how  large  that  was ;  it  tells  me  not 
what  flocks  it  sheltered  while  it  stood,  nor  what  men  it  hurt 
when  it  fell.  The  dust  of  great  persons'  graves  is  speech- 
less, too:  it  says  nothing,  it  distinguishes  nothing.  As  soon 
the  dust  of  a  wretch  whom  thou  wouldest  not,  as  of  a  prince 
whom  thou  couldest  not  look  upon,  will  trouble  thine  eyes,  if 
the  wind  blow  it  thither;  and  when  a  whirlwind  hath  blown 
the  dust  of  the  Churchyard  into  the  Church,  and  the  man 
sweeps  out  the  dust  of  the  Church  into  the  Churchyard, 
who  will  undertake  to  sift  those  dusts  again  and  to  pro- 
nounce, This  is  the  Patrician,  this  is  the  noble  flowre  [flour], 
and  this  the  yeomanly,  this  the  Plebeian  bran  ?  So  was  the 
death  of  Jezabel  (Jezabel  was  a  Queen)  expressed.  They 
shall  not  say  This  is  Jezabel;  not  only  not  wonder  that  it  is, 
nor  pity  that  it  should  be:  but  they  shall  not  say,  they  shall 
not  know,  This  is  Jezabel. 


Thus  in  his  Sermons,  if  you  seek,  you  will  find  the 
Donne  I  maintain  to  be  the  greater  Donne,  master  of 
well-knit  argument,  riding  tumultuous  emotion  as  with 
a  bridle,  thundering  out  fugue  upon  fugue  of  prose 
modulated  with  almost  impeccable  ear.  Why  do  critics 
then  go  on  judging  him  first  and  almost  solely  as  a  poet  ? 
And  why  do  I,  following  them  to  do  evil,  speak  of  him 
today  chiefly  as  a  poet? 


no  Studies  in  Literature 

He  had  no  architectonic  gift  in  poetry:  in  poetry 
the  skill  that  articulated,  knit,  compacted  his  Sermons 
and  marched  his  arguments  as  warriors  in  battalion, 
completely  forsook  him.  Through  lack  of  it  The  Pro- 
gresse  of  the  Soule  which  might  have  been  a  triumph,  is  a 
wobbling  fiasco.  Of  the  art  that  constructs  a  Divina 
Commedia,  an  Othello,  a  Samson  Agonistes,  or  even  a 
Beggar's  Opera,  he  had  no  inkling  whatever.  It  was 
not  that  he  strove  for  it  and  missed;  it  was  that  he 
either  knew  not  or  cared  not  a  farthing  about  it. 

He  had  (they  say)  a  most  peccable  ear  in  verse. 
Critics  so  great  as  Dryden,  Pope,  Johnson,  Coleridge,  all 
agree  on  this  point:  so  I  suppose  they  must  be  right. 
They  agree  also  in  calling  him  difficult,  crabbed,  etc. 
Being  so  great  men,  therefore,  let  them  be  right. 

I  can  only  say  that  after  trial,  especially  in  reading 
him  aloud  to  myself,  I  find  him  by  nine-tenths  less 
inharmonious,  halting,  crabbed,  or  difficult  than  these 
great  critics  take  for  granted  that  he  is.  Of  course,  if 
you  choose  a  line  of  his  and  read  it  clumsily,  if  you  accent 

Blasted  with  sighs  and  surrounded  with  tears 
as  if  you  were  ordering 

Bacon  and  eggs  and  a  half-pint  of  beer 

you  make  little  of  it  as  a  ten-syllable  iambic ;  as  if  you 
choose  to  scan  with  your  thumb  instead  of  the  organ 
God  gave  you : 

Blasted,  with  sighs,  and  sur-rounde"d  with  tears, 
you  will  make  less.     But  if  you  read 

Blasted  with  sighs,  and  surrounded  with  tears, 
Hither  I  come  to  seek  the  spring, 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets          in 

letting  the  voice  linger  on  "sur-round, "  the  line  becomes 
exquisite. 

But  come,  let  us  take  a  poem  of  his  and  test  this 
alleged  harshness : 

Little  think'st  thou,  poore  flower, 

Whom  I  have  watch 'd  sixe  or  seaven  da  yes, 

And  seene  thy  birth,  and  scene  what  every  houre 

Gave  to  thy  growth,  thee  to  this  height  to  raise, 

And  now  dost  laugh  and  triumph  on  this  bough, 

Little  think'st  thou 

That  it  will  freeze  anon,  and  that  I  shall 
To  morrow  finde  thee  falne,  or  not  at  all. 

Little  think'st  thou  poore  heart 

That  labour'st  yet  to  nestle  thee, 
And  think'st  by  hovering  here  to  get  a  part 
In  a  forbidden  or  forbidding  tree, 
And  hop'st  her  stiffenesse  by  long  siege  to  bow: 

Little  think'st  thou, 

That  thou  to  morrow,  ere  that  Sunne  doth  wake, 
Must  with  this  Sunne,  and  mee  a  journey  take. 

But  thou  which  lov'st  to  bee 

Subtile  to  plague  thy  selfe,  wilt  say, 
Alas,  if  you  must  goe,  what's  that  to  mee? 
Here  lyes  my  businesse,  and  here  I  will  stay : 
You  goe  to  friends,  whose  love  and  meanes  present 

Various  content 

To  your  eyes,  eares,  and  tongue,  and  every  part. 
If  then  your  body  goe,  what  need  you  a  heart? 

Well  then,  stay  here;  but  know, 

When  thou  hast  stay'd  and  done  thy  most; 

A  naked  thinking  heart,  that  makes  no  show, 

Is  to  a  woman,  but  a  kinde  of  Ghost; 

How  shall  shee  know  my  heart;  or  having  none, 
Know  thee  for  one? 


ii2  Studies  in  Literature 

Practise  may  make  her  know  some  other  part, 
But  take  my  word,  she  doth  not  know  a  Heart. 

Meet  mee  at  London,  then, 

Twenty  dayes  hence,  and  thou  shalt  see 

Mee  fresher,  and  more  fat,  by  being  with  men, 

Then  if  I  had  staid  still  with  her  and  thee. 

For  Gods  sake,  if  you  can,  be  you  so  too : 
I  would  give  you 

There,  to  another  friend,  whom  wee  shall  finde 

As  glad  to  have  my  body,  as  my  minde. 

None  the  less  I  grant  you  that  Donne's  ear  for  the 
beat  of  verse  is  so  wayward,  its  process  often  so  recon- 
dite, that  the  most  of  his  poetry  is  a  struggle  rather 
than  a  success:  and  I  have  already  admitted  that  he 
could  not  plan  a  poem. 

Why  then  does  everyone  insist  on  judging  as  a  poet, 
and  a  faulty  one,  this  man  who  had  a  superlatively  fine 
ear  for  the  rhythm  of  prose  and  could  construct  in 
prose?  And  why  am  I  following  the  multitude? 

The  first  and  most  obvious  answer  is  that  nobody 
reads  sermons  in  these  days,  and  few  even  trouble  to 
attend  them.  For  reasons  which  we  will  examine  on 
another  occasion,  the  once  glorious  art  of  preaching  has 
perished  out  of  our  midst.  The  tradition  is  there — laid 
up  in  Donne's  Sermons:  "laid  up,  not  lost!" 

But  the  main  reason  is  that  his  verse  did  smash  up 
an  effete  tradition  of  verse.  It  smashed  up  Petrarch- 
in-English,  and  it  was  high  time.  It  did  so  influence 
English  verse  for  at  least  half  a  century,  that  (as  some- 
one has  said)  like  a  glove  of  civet  it  scents  every  gar- 
ment you  take  out  of  the  wardrobe. 

Gentlemen,  never  mind  when  someone  smashes  up  a 
convention  to  make  a  new  thing.  That  way — trust  it — 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets          113 

lies  life:  and  literature  may  make  almost  any  sacrifice 
to  renew  itself  alive.  What  was  it  this  man  had  to 
invent  or  to  rediscover,  that  he  broke  up  so  much? 

VI 

Most  of  you  know  Johnson's  Life  of  Cowley,  and  the 
hay  that  great  man  made  of  the  "metaphysical"  poets, 
tossing  them  on  his  horns.  Why  "metaphysical"  I 
don't  know.  Johnson  had  compiled  a  Dictionary,  and 
therefore  had  no  excuse  for  not  knowing  that  "meta- 
physical" was  no  accurate  term  for  the  thing  he  took  so 
much  joy  in  deriding.  He  probably  meant  something 
like  "fiddlesticks";  something  contemptuous.  He 
makes  admirable  play  with  a  number  of  things  that  do 
not  matter.  But  he  never  gets  near  what  does  matter. 

What  is  Mysticism  ? 

It  is  something,  at  any  rate,  which  Johnson  had 
small  care  or  capacity  to  understand. 

It  is  also  something  which  even  Shakespeare  did  not 
understand,  though  he  unconsciously  relied  on  it.  You 
may  choose  your  grandest  passage  from  Shakespeare: 
choose  Prospero's  cloud-capped  towers  and  gorgeous 
palaces;  or  choose  Cleopatra's  wail  upon  dead  Antony: 

O!  wither'd  is  the  garland  of  the  war, 
The  soldier's  pole  is  fall'n;  young  boys  and  girls 
Are  level  now  with  men;  the  odds  is  gone, 
And  there  is  nothing  left  remarkable 
Beneath  the  visiting  moon. 

Then  set  beside  it  a  line  or  two  of  Blake : 

When  the  stars  threw  down  their  spears, 
And  water'd  heaven  with  their  tears  .  .  . 
or 


ii4  Studies  in  Literature 

A  Robin  Redbreast  in  a  cage  '. 
Puts  all  heaven  in  a  rage  .  .  . 

or  Wordsworth's  Ode  to  Duty: 

Thou  dost  preserve  the  stars  from  wrong; 
And  the  most  ancient  heavens,  through  Thee,  are  fresh  and 
strong  .  .  . 

and  you  will  perceive  that  there  are  more  things  in 
heaven  and  earth  than  find  their  way  into  great  Shake- 
speare's philosophy ;  and  in  particular  a  something  which 
Plato  had  known,  which  Shakespeare  did  not  know, 
which  therefore  had  to  be  rediscovered  by  poets,  wise 
men  and  children. 

That  something  was  Mysticism.  And  Mysticism  is 
— well,  Mysticism,  Gentlemen,  is  something  we  will 
discuss  in  our  next  lecture;  in  which  I  shall  also  try  to 
explain  why  Donne,  who  helped  to  rediscover  it,  was 
an  imperfect  mystic,  as  also  to  trace  it  in  certain  of  his 
followers — Herbert,  Vaughan,  Traherne. 

For  the  present  be  it  enough  to  say  that  he  was  an 
imperfect  poet,  and  mainly  for  two  reasons:  (i)  he 
had  no  constant  vision  of  beauty,  (2)  he  had  too 
busy  an  intellect,  which  ever  tempted  him  (as  Touch- 
stone would  say)  to  be  breaking  his  shins  on  his  own 
wit:  or  as  an  American  friend  used  to  put  it,  he 
suffered  "from  a  rush  of  brains  to  the  head. "  In  lines 
and  short  passages  he  could  be  exquisite.  Witness 
this: 

I  long  to  talke  with  some  old  lovers  ghost, 

Who  dyed  before  the  god  of  Love  was  borne  .  .  . 

or  this,  from  his  Anatomic  of  the  World: 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets          115 

Her  pure,  and  eloquent  blood 
Spoke  in  her  cheekes,  and  so  distinctly  wrought, 
That  one  might  almost  say,  her  body  thought. 

But  more  than  half  his  time  we  see  the  man  sweating 
and  straining  at  his  forge  and  bellows.  Obviously  half 
the  time  he  himself  cannot  see  what  he  is  working  at, 
hammering  at  "that  is  as  it  may  turn  out,"  and  then, 
suddenly,  out  of  the  smoke,  shine  verses  like  this,  from 
The  Extasie: 

As  'twixt  two  equall  Armies,  Fate 

Suspends  uncertaine  victorie, 
Our  soules,  (which  to  advance  their  state, 

Were  gone  out,)  hung  'twixt  her,  and  mee. 

And  whil'st  our  soules  negotiate  there, 

Wee  like  sepulchrall  statues  lay; 
All  day,  the  same  our  postures  were, 

And  wee  said  nothing,  all  the  day. 

VII 

In  his  last  years,  as  disease,  over-study  and  fasting 
broke  up  his  body,  his  mind  played  more  and  more 
constantly  upon  death  and  its  physical  horrors,  the 
charnel-house  and  the  worm :  yes,  though  he,  always 
eloquent  against  the  grave,  had  written  this  most  holy 
sonnet  defying  it: 

Death  be  not  proud,  though  some  have  called  thee 
Mighty  and  dreadfull ;  for,  thou  art  not  soe, 
For,  those,  whom  thou  think'st,  thou  dost  overthrow, 
Die  not,  poor  death,  nor  yet  canst  thou  kill  mee. 
From  rest  and  sleepe,  which  but  thy  pictures  bee, 
Much  pleasure,  then  from  thee,  much  more  must  flow, 
And  soonest  our  best  men  with  thee  doe  goe, 
Rest  of  their  bones,  and  soules  deliverie. 


n6  Studies  in  Literature 

Thou  art  slave  to  Fate,  Chance,  kings,  and  desperate  men 
And  dost  with  poyson,  warre,  and  sicknesse  dwell, 
And  poppie  or  charmes  can  make  us  sleepe  as  well, 
And  better  then  thy  stroake;  why  swell'st  thou  then? 
One  short  sleepe  past,  wee  wake  eternally, 
And  death  shall  be  no  more;  death,  thou  shalt  die. 

This  man  lived  his  last  days  and  slept  for  years  with 
a  full-length  portrait  of  himself  (for  which  he  stood  on 
an  urn,  naked,  clad  in  a  winding-sheet)  laid  alongside  his 
bed,  "where  it  continued  and  became  his  hourly  object 
till  his  death. "  You  may  see  the  horrible  silly  picture 
in  many  editions  of  the  Life.  It  is  kept  among  the 
archives  of  St.  Paul's.  Reflex  action,  say  I,  of  carnality 
in  exitu.  A  very  "gloomy  Dean"  of  St.  Paul's  at  any 
rate!  First  and  last,  Donne  \/as  always  that  man  in 
Plato  who,  drawing  near  the  city  ditch  and  spying  the 
rotten  corpses  of  some  malefactors  that  had  been  flung 
there,  stood  still  between  abhorrence  and  a  filthy  at- 
traction; until  at  length,  overcome,  he  ran  to  the  spot 
opening  his  eyes  wide  with  his  fingers  and  crying, 
"Take  your  fill,  you  wretches,  since  you  must  have  it 
so." 

But  a  great  man,  indubitably  a  very  great  man:  all 
the  taller  for  standing  in  the  mire  of  corruption  and 
reaching  up  to  grasp  celestial  doors.  A  great  man:  a 
very  penitent  man !  He  died  on  the  3 1  st  day  of  March, 
1631,  and  was  buried  in  St.  Paul's.  Let  a  simple 
admirer,  a  holy  and  humble  man  of  heart — let  Izaak 
Walton — say  the  last  word  on  him,  whom  many 
apparently  greater  admired: 

He  was  by  nature  highly  passionate,  but  more  apt  to 
reluct  at  the  excesses  of  it.  A  great  lover  of  the  offices  of 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets          117 

humanity,  and  of  so  merciful  a  spirit,  that  he  never  beheld 
the  miseries  of  mankind  without  pity  and  relief. 

He  was  earnest  and  unwearied  in  the  search  of  knowledge, 
with  which  his  vigorous  soul  is  now  satisfied,  and  employed 
in  a  continual  praise  of  that  God  that  first  breathed  it  into 
his  active  body :  that  body,  which  once  was  a  Temple  of  the 
Holy  Ghost,  and  is  now  become  a  small  quantity  of  Christ- 
ian dust: — 

But  I  shall  see  it  re-animated. 


II.     HERBERT  AND  VAUGHN 


I  SHALL  begin  today,  Gentlemen,  by  collecting  from 
my  previous  lectures  sundry  scattered  tenets  which, 
if  you  remember  them  at  all,  you  probably  remember 
disconnectedly  as  things  dropped  disconnectedly,  casu- 
ally, on  occasion :  and  I  shall  try  (if  you  will  allow  the 
simile)  to  piece  these  scraps  of  glass  together  into  a 
small  window  through  which  you  may  not  only,  as  I 
hope,  have  a  glimpse  into  the  true  meaning  of  ' '  Mysti- 
cism"— which  was  the  question  on  which  we  parted,  a 
fortnight  ago — but  even  perhaps,  into  the  last  meaning 
of  poetry.  Oh  yes ! — a  most  presumptuous  hope  most 
presumptuously  uttered.  But  we  have  to  do  our  best 
in  our  little  time:  and  my  experience  has  been  that 
while  many  things  continue  to  lurk  in  a  glass  darkly, 
certain  clear  visions  have  come,  and  the  clearest  of  these 
not  seldom  through  the  eyes  of  a  friend.  If  that  word, 
again,  be  presumptuous,  you  must  forgive  me. 

First,  then,  I  have  preached  to  you  over  and  over 
from  this  desk,  and  not  seldom  explicitly,  that  the 
function  of  all  true  art,  and  in  particular  of  poetry 
(with  which  we  are  concerned)  is  to  harmonise  the  soul 
of  man  with  the  immense  Universe  surrounding  him, 
in  which  he  divines  a  procession  which  is  orderly,  an 
order  which  is  harmonious,  a  procession,  an  order, 
a  harmony  which  obey,  as  law,  a  Will  infinitely  above 

118 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets          119 

him,  infinitesimally  careful  of  him — the  many  million- 
millionth  part  of  a  speck  of  dust,  yet  sentient. 

Great  thinkers  (as  you  know)  have  all  recognised 
this  order.  Indeed  they  must,  for  it  conditions  all 
their  thinking.  If  the  Universe  were  a  chaos,  which 
is  anarchy — if  the  sun  rose  unpunctually  and  lay  down 
when  it  felt  inclined,  if  no  moon  commanded  the  tides, 
if  the  stars  were  peevish,  running  to  and  fro  like  spoilt 
children — any  connected  thought  would  be  impossible 
and  we  no  better  but  worse  than  blind  men  jostled 
about  by  a  crowd.  But  as  a  fact  we  know  that  what- 
ever it  be,  watching  over  Israel,  it  slumbers  not  nor 
sleeps.  Begin  where  you  will.  Begin,  if  you  choose, 
with  the  rebuke  to  Job : 

Canst  thou  bind  the  sweet  influences  of  Pleiades,  or  loose 
the  bands  of  Orion  ? 

Canst  thou  bring  forth  Mazzaroth  in  his  season?  or  canst 
thou  guide  Arcturus  with  his  sons? 

Or  with  Ecclesiasticus : 

The  beauty  of  heaven,  the  glory  of  the  stars,  an  ornament 
giving  light  in  the  highest  places  of  the  Lord. 

At  the  commandment  of  the  Holy  One  they  will  stand  in 
their  order,  and  never  faint  in  their  watches. 

Come  down  to  Wordsworth's  Ode  to  Duty: 

Thou  dost  preserve  the  stars  from  wrong, 
And  the  most  ancient  heavens,  through  Thee,  are  fresh 
and  strong. 

Or  to  Meredith's  Lucifer  in  Starlight: 

On  a  starr'd  night  Prince  Lucifer  uprose. 
Tired  of  his  dark  dominion  swung  the  fiend 


120  Studies  in  Literature 

Above  the  rolling  ball  in  cloud  part  screen'd. 
Where  sinners  hugg'd  their  spectre  of  repose. 
Poor  prey  in  his  hot  fit  of  pride  were  those, 

And  now  upon  his  western  wing  he  lean'd, 

Now  his  huge  bulk  o'er  Afric's  sands  careen'd, 
Now  the  black  planet  shadow'd  Arctic  snows. 
Soaring  through  wider  zones  that  prick'd  his  scars 

With  memory  of  the  old  revolt  from  Awe, 
He  reach'd  a  middle  height,  and  at  the  stars, 
Which  are  the  brain  of  heaven,  he  look'd,  and  sank. 
Around  the  ancient  track  march'd,  rank  on  rank, 

The  army  of  unalterable  law. 

The  poets,  as  you  know,  and  philosophers  (of  whom 
Plato  is  chief  of  course)  with  poetry  in  their  souls, 
attempt  by  many  parables  to  convey  their  sense  of 
this  grand,  harmonious,  universal  orchestral  movement. 
You  recall  the  supposed  music  of  the  spheres,  inaudible 
to  mortals : 

Sit,  Jessica,  Look  .  .  . 

There's  not  the  smallest  orb  which  thou  behold'st" 

But  in  his  motion  like  an  angel  sings, 

Still  quiring  to  the  young-eyed  cherubins. 

You  remember  in  Plato  the  story  of  Er  the  Pamphylian, 
whose  relatives  after  ten  days  sought  his  dead  body  on 
the  battle-field,  and  found  it  without  taint  of  corruption : 
and  how  on  the  twelfth  day,  being  laid  on  the  pyre,  he 
came  back  to  life  and  told  them  where  he  had  wandered 
in  the  other  world,  and  what  seen:  but  chiefly  of  the 
great  spindle  on  the  knees  of  Necessity,  reaching  up  to 
heaven  and  turning  in  eight  whorls  of  graduated  speed 
— "and  on  the  rim  of  each  sits  a  Siren,  who  revolves 
with  it,  hymning  a  single  note;  the  eight  notes  together 
forming  one  harmony. "  Plato  learned  of  Pythagoras, 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets          121 

Dante  of  Plato,  Chaucer  of  Dante,  Milton  of  Plato 
again.     Hearken  to  Milton : 


Then  listen  I 

To  the  celestial  Sirens'  harmony 
That  sit  upon  the  nine  infolded  spheres 
And  sing  to  those  that  hold  the  vital  shears, 
And  turn  the  adamantine  spindle  round 
On  which  the  fate  of  gods  and  men  is  wound. 
Such  sweet  compulsion  doth  in  music  lie, 
To  lull  the  daughters  of  Necessity, 
And  keep  unsteady  Nature  to  her  law, 
And  the  low  world  in  measured  motion  draw 
After  the  heavenly  tune. 


A  commentator  on  this  passage  has  informed  the 
world  in  a  footnote  that  "Modern  astronomy  has 
exploded  the  singular  notion  of  revolving  hollow  con- 
centric spheres."  (By  "singular,"  by  the  way,  he 
probably  meant  "curious" — the  notion  was  never 
"singular,"  it  was  held  by  thousands.)  But  true, 
true!  Not  profoundly,  perhaps,  but  how  obviously 
true!  Orpheus  and  Odysseus  and  Dante  did  not  de- 
scend into  Hell,  really.  There  are  no  such  places  as 
Utopia  or  the  Slough  of  Despond  or  the  Delectable 
Mountains  or  Laputa  or  the  Woods  of  Westermain  or 
Hy  Brazil — really.  And  the  cow  never  jumped  over 
the  moon,  really.  But,  poor  thing,  she  might  try  I  if 
she  weren't  suffering  from  the  footnote  and  mouth 
disease.  In  short,  there  are  such  things  as  parables, 
and  the  greatest  of  teachers  have  not  disdained  them. 

This  parable  presents  a  truth,  and  one  of  the  two 
most  important  truths  in  the  world: — the  Universe  is 
not  a  Chaos  but  a  Harmony. 


122  Studies  in  Literature 

II 

Now  the  other  and  only  equally  important  truth  in 
the  world  is  that  this  macrocosm  of  the  Universe,  with 
its  harmony,  cannot  be  apprehended  at  all  except  as  it 
is  focussed  upon  the  eye,  intellect  and  soul  of  Man, 
the  microcosm.  All  systems  of  philosophy — from  the 
earliest  analysed  in  "Ritter  and  Preller"  down  to  James 
and  Bergson — inevitably  work  out  to  this,  that  the 
universal  harmony  is  meaningless  and  nothing  to  man 
save  in  so  far  as  he  can  apprehend  it,  and  that  he  can 
apprehend  it  only  by  reference  to  some  corresponding 
harmony  in  himself.  He  is,  let  us  repeat  the  admission 
— You  are,  I  am — but  the  million-millionth  atom  of 
a  speck.  None  the  less  that  atom,  being  sentient,  is 
reflective:  being  reflective,  draws  and  contracts  the 
whole  into  its  tiny  ring.  Impercipient,  what  were  we 
but  dead  things? 

Rolled  round  in  earth's  diurnal  course, 
With  rocks,  and  stones,  and  trees, 

Percipient — solely  by  the  grace  of  percipience,  we  are 
inheritors  of  it  all,  and  kings.  To  quote  one  of  the 
poets,  Traherne,  with  whom  I  am  to  deal : 

But  little  did  the  infant  dream 
That  all  the  treasures  of  the  world  were  by: 

And  that  himself  was  so  the  cream 
And  crown  of  all  which  round  about  did  lie. 
Yet  thus  it  was :  the  Gem, 

The  Diadem, 
The  ring  enclosing  all 
That  stand  upon  this  earthly  ball, 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets          123 

The  Heavenly  eye, 
Much  wider  than  the  sky, 
Wherein  they  all  included  were, 

The  glorious  Soul,  that  was  the  King 
Made  to  possess  them,  did  appear 

A  small  and  little  thing! 

Here  another,  Henry  Vaughan : 

I  saw  Eternity,  the  other  night, 

Like  a  great  Ring  of  pure  and  endless  light, 

All  calm,  as  it  was  bright; 
And  round  beneath  it,  Time,  in  hours,  days,  years, 

Driv'n  by  the  spheres, 
Like  a  vast  shadow  mov'd. 

In  that  shadow  he  sees  men  of  all  sorts  and  conditions 
— the  lover,  the  "darksome  statesman,"  the  "fearful 
miser, "  the  "downright  epicure" — pursuing  their  parti- 
cular cheats  of  shadow : 

Yet  some,  who  all  this  while  did  weep  and  sing, 
And  sing  and  weep,  soar'd  up  into  the  Ring  ; 

But  most  would  use  no  wing. 
"0  fools!" — said  I — "thus  to  prefer  dark  night 

Before  true  light ! 
To  live  in  grots  and  caves,  and  hate  the  day 

Because  it  shews  the  way, 
The  way  which  from  this  dead  and  dark  abode 

Leads  up  to  God, 
A  way  where  you  might  tread  the  Sun,  and  be 

More  bright  than  he!" 
But  as  I  did  their  madnes  so  discusse, 

One  whisper'd  thus, 
"This  Ring  the  Bride-groome  did  for  none  provide 

But  for  his  Bride. " 


124  Studies  in  Literature 

III 

So  we  have  two  rings — the  immense  orchestral  ring 
of  the  Universe  wheeling  above  and  around  us,  and 
the  tiny  percipient  ring  which  is  the  pupil  of  your 
eye  or  mine  threaded  to  a  brain  infinitesimal  and  yet 
infinitely  capable.  But  there  is  one  thing  more  to  be 
said — and  a  thing  of  first  importance  concerning  this 
little  soul  of  man.  It  instinctively  aspires,  yearns  to 
know  the  greater  harmony,  if  only  to  render  it  a  more 
perfect  obedience :  and  it  aspires,  yearns,  through  a  sense 
of  likeness,  of  oneness,  of  sonship.  Man  is,  after  all, 
a  part  of  the  Universe  and  just  as  surely  as  the  Pleiades 
or  Arcturus.  Moreover  he  feels  in  himself  a  harmony 
correspondent  with  the  greater  harmony  of  his  quest. 
His  heart  pumps  his  blood  to  a  rhythm ;  like  the  plants 
by  which  he  is  fed,  he  comes  to  birth,  grows,  begets  his 
kind,  enjoys  and  adorns  his  day,  dies,  and  returns  to 
earth;  and  by  seasons  regulates  his  life,  as  summer 
and  winter,  seedtime  and  harvest  sweep  their  circle 
over  him,  rhythmical  and  recurrent,  to  find  him  and  his 
house  standing,  his  garden  a  little  better  planted,  his 
task  a  trifle  advanced  to  completion.  And  then? — 
why  then,  of  course,  he  is  gone:  another  has  his  place, 
and  digs  his  patch.  But  while  his  day  lasts,  the  brain 
just  behind  his  sweating  brow  is  the  percipient  centre 
upon  which  the  whole  cosmic  circle  focusses  itself  as  the 
sun  through  a  burning-glass :  and  he  is  not  shrivelled  up 
by  it.  On  the  contrary,  he  feels  that  it  is  all  for  him. 
As  Traherne  writes: 

The  streets  were  mine,  the  temple  was  mine,  the  people 
were  mine,  their  clothes  and  gold  and  silver  were  mine,  as 
much  as  their  sparkling  eyes,  fair  skins  and  ruddy  faces. 
The  skies  were  mine,  and  so  were  the  sun  and  moon  and 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets          125 

stars,  and  all  the  World  was  mine;  and  I  the  only  spectator 
and  enjoyer  of  it. 

And  again,  magnificently: 

You  never  enjoy  the  world  aright,  till  the  Sea  itself 
floweth  in  your  veins,  till  you  are  clothed  with  the  heavens, 
and  crowned  with  the  stars. 

Yes,  and  moreover  man  nurses  a  native  impulse  to 
merge  himself  in  the  greater  harmony  and  be  one  with 
it;  a  spirit  in  his  heart  (as  the  Scripture  puts  it)  "of 
adoption,  whereby  we  cry  Abba,  Father. "  Open  your 
Browning  and  read  Johannes  Agricola: 

There's  heaven  above,  and  night  by  night 

I  look  right  through  its  gorgeous  roof; 
No  suns  and  moons  though  e'er  so  bright 

Avail  to  stop  me;  splendour-proof 

I  keep  the  broods  of  stars  aloof, 
For  I  intend  to  get  to  God, 

For  'tis  to  God  I  speed  so  fast, 
For  in  God's  breast,  my  own  abode 

Those  shoals  of  dazzling  glory,  passed, 

I  lay  my  spirit  down  at  last. 
I  lie  where  I  have  always  lain, 

God  smiles  as  he  has  always  smiled; 
Ere  suns  and  moons  could  wax  and  wane, 

Ere  stars  were  thunder-girt,  or  piled 

The  heavens,  God  thought  on  me  his  child. 

IV 

"All  very  well,"  you  may  urge:  "but  how  is  it  done?  " 
Well  it  is  not  done  by  the  way  of  philosophy.  The 
quarrel  between  philosophy  and  poetry  is  notorious 
and  inveterate:  the  patronage  of  poetry  by  philosophy 


126  Studies  in  Literature 

as  stupid  as  it  is  solemnly  recognisable.  For  philosophy 
attempts  to  comprehend  God's  purposes  into  some 
system  or  another:  a  way  which,  if  effectual,  at  once 
enables  man  to  teach  God  his  business,  or  at  least  to 
nag  him  about  it,  playing  Egeria  to  his  Numa.  ' '  God, ' ' 
says  Heine,  "created  man  in  his  image — and  man  made 
haste  to  return  the  compliment. "  The  philosophers  are 
always  returning  the  compliment,  stoking  the  chimneys 
of  Sion  red-hot  to  run  out  the  Almighty's  purposes 
into  moulds  of  this  or  that  system.  But  if  by  a  stretch 
of  fancy  we  can  conceive  Hegel  or  Comte  or  Bergson 
or  any  of  these  constructives  as  knowing  all  about  it, 
why  then  Hegel  or  Comte  or  Bergson  is  theoretically 
as  good  as  God — and  then,  the  Lord  stiffen,  for  us  all, 
the  last  barrier  between  theory  and  practice ! 

The  poet  is  more  modest.  He  aspires,  not  to  com- 
prehend but  to  apprehend:  to  pierce,  by  flashes,  to  some 
point  or  other  of  the  great  wheeling  circle.  I  have  put 
it  thus  in  an  earlier  lecture — There  are  certain  men, 
granted  to  dwell  among  us,  of  more  delicate  mental 
texture  than  their  fellows;  men  (often  in  the  rough- 
and-tumble  unhappy  therefore),  whose  minds  have,  as 
it  were,  exquisite  filaments  to  intercept,  apprehend  and 
conduct  stray  messages  between  the  outer  mystery  of 
the  Universe  and  the  inner  mystery  of  the  individual 
soul;  even  as  telegraphy  has  learnt  to  snatch  stray 
messages  wandering  over  waste  waters  of  ocean.  And 
these  men  are  poets. 

V 

Still  you  may  ask,  "How  is  this  apprehending  done? 
What  is  the  process?" 

Why,  Gentlemen,  last  term,  in  a  course  of  lectures 
"On  the  Art  of  Reading" — a  course  which  I  hope  to 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets          127 

take  up  again  after  Christmas  and  to  continue — I 
insisted  almost  to  weariness  on  the  trinity  in  Man: 
What  does,  What  knows,  What  is,  I  insisted  almost  to 
weariness  that  through  What  is  lies  the  way  to  spiritual 
understanding;  that,  all  spirit  attracting  all  spirit  as 
surely  as  all  matter  attracts  all  matter,  it  is  only  by 
becoming  like  them,  by  being  like  them,  that  we  ap- 
prehend a  spiritual  truth  in  Dante,  Shakespeare  or 
Tolstoy;  as  in  that  way  and  no  other  they  brought  the 
angel  down.  Paley's  Evidences? — a  folly  of  perversion ! 
Any  child  has  surer  evidence  within  him ;  as  any  child, 
taking  up  Hamlet,  feels  that  it  was  written  for  him,  and 
in  no  condescension  either — he  is  the  Prince  of  Denmark. 
The  Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  within  us.  A  lost  province? 
Maybe:  but  we  know  today,  Gentlemen,  how  a  lost 
province  will  remember  its  parent  state,  how  hard  a 
road  the  parent  will  travel  to  recover  that  which  was  lost. 
You  may  not  agree  with  me  that  here  lies  the  deepest 
secret  of  poetry:  but  I  present  it  to  you  as  a  historical 
fact  that  here  lies  the  central  tenet  of  the  Mystics.  Man 
and  the  Universe  and  God  are  in  nature  One:  Unity 
(if  we  can  find  it)  runs  through  all  diversities  and 
harmonises  them.  Therefore  to  know  anything  of 
God  Himself  we  must  be,  to  that  extent,  like  God: 
therefore,  too,  the  best  part  of  revenge  upon  an  enemy 
(think  of  it,  in  these  days)  is  not  to  be  like  him. 

VI 

But  still  you  ask,  "What  is  the  process?"  Surely 
that  lies  implicit  in  what  has  been  said.  Man  has  in 
him — I  will  not  say  a  "subliminal  self" — but  a  soul 
listening  within  for  a  message;  so  fain  to  hear  that 
sometimes  it  must  arise  and  tip-toe  to  the  threshold : 


128  Studies  in  Literature 

News  from  a  foreign  country  came 
As  if  my  treasure  and  my  wealth  lay  there; 

So  much  it  did  my  heart  inflame, 
'Twas  wont  to  call  my  Soul  into  mine  ear; 

Which  thither  went  to  meet 

The  approaching  sweet, 

And  on  the  threshold  stood 

To  entertain  the  unknown  Good. 
It  hover'd  there 

As  if  'twould  leave  mine  ear, 

And  was  so  eager  to  embrace 

The  joyful  tidings  as  they  came, 
'Twould  almost  leave  its  dwelling-place 
To  entertain  that  same. 

But  the  news  comes  from  without,  in  its  own  good 
time  and  often  in  guise  totally  surprising,  like  the 
Messiah : 

They  all  were  looking  for  a  king 

To  slay  their  foes  and  lift  them  high: 

Thou  cam'st,  a  little  baby  thing, 
That  made  a  woman  cry. 

You  must  (says  the  mystic)  await  the  hour  and  trust 
the  invitation,  neither  of  which  you  may  command. 
The  poets  (say  they)  do  not  read  the  Word  by  vigorous 
striving  and  learning,  as  your  philosophers  do :  neither, 
like  the  priests  of  Baal,  do  they  cut  themselves  and  yell. 
Nor  do  they  wrestle  with  God  like  Jacob;  but  wait, 
prepare  themselves  with  Mary,  and  say,  "Be  it  unto  me 
according  to  thy  word."  They  wait,  in  what  one  of 
them  called  "a  wise  passiveness " : 

The  eye — it  cannot  choose  but  see; 

We  cannot  bid  the  ear  be  still; 
Our  bodies  feel,  where'er  they  be, 

Against  or  with  our  will. 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets          129 

Not  less  I  deem  that  there  are  Powers 
Which  of  themselves  our  minds  impress; 

That  we  can  feed  this  mind  of  ours 
In  a  wise  passiveness. 

Think  you,  'mid  all  this  mighty  sum 

Of  things  for  ever  speaking, 
That  nothing  of  itself  will  come, 

But  we  must  still  be  seeking? 

And  again  this  same  Wordsworth,  in  his  Tintern  Abbey, 
tells  of  "that  serene  and  blessed  mood"  wherein 

the  breath  of  this  corporeal  frame 
And  even  the  motion  of  our  human  blood, 
Almost  suspended,  we  are  laid  asleep 
In  body,  and  become  a  living  soul: 
While  with  an  eye  made  quiet  by  the  power 
Of  harmony,  and  the  deep  power  of  joy, 
We  see  into  the  life  of  things. 

Let  this,  then,  be  said  today  about  the  mystical  poets. 
Their  way  is  not  to  strive  and  cry:  it  is  enough  for 
them  to  wait,  receptacles  of  the  divine  passing  breath. 
If  you  command,  "Strike  and  sing  us  a  song  of  Sion, " 
they  answer,  "How  can  we  sing  the  songs  of  Sion  in 
a  strange  land?"  but  the  harp  abandoned  and  hung 
on  a  willow  by  the  waters  of  Babylon  may  catch  at 
evening  (say  they)  and  hum  a  wind  whispering  from 
Israel.  The  poet  merely  by  waiting  and  trusting  arrives 
per  saltum  at  truths  to  which  the  philosopher,  pack- 
laden  and  varicose  upon  the  military  road  of  logic,  can 
never  reach. 

There  yet  remain  two  things  to  be  said  about  mystic- 
ism; and  perhaps  a  third,  at  the  end. 

The  first  is  that  as  a  historical  fact  all  mystics,  how- 


130  Studies  in  Literature 

ever  diverse  their  outlook  or  inlook,  have  been  curiously 
gracious  and  yet  more  curiously  happy  men.  They 
have  found,  if  not  contentment  itself,  the  way  of 
contentment  and  an  anchorage  for  the  soul.  They 
possess  it  in  patience.  They  are  the  pure  in  heart  and 
blessed  because  they  see,  or  believe  they  see,  God. 

The  second  is  that,  possessed  with  a  sense  of  unity 
in  all  things,  likeness  in  all  things,  every  mystic  has 
a  propensity  to  deal  in  symbols,  to  catch  at  illustrations 
which  to  him  seem  natural  enough,  but  to  us  far-fetched, 
"conceited,"  not  in  pari  materia.  You  have,  all  the 
while,  to  lay  account  with  this  in  dealing  with  these 
seventeenth  century  men,  as  I  shall  show. 

VII 

Now  to  return  to  Donne  on  whom  we  discoursed  last 
week.  He  is  obviously  an  imperfect  mystic,  being  too 
restlessly  intellectual,  having  little  or  none  of  Words- 
worth's "wise  passiveness."  He  strives,  he  cries:  and 
his  wit  is  such  that  he  will  fetch  an  illustration  from 
anywhere.  I  suppose  his  poem  The  Flea  to  be  about 
the  most  merely  disgusting  in  our  language.  He  will 
ruin  an  exquisite  poem  (for  us)  by  comparing  two  lovers' 
souls  with  a  pair  of  compasses : 

If  they  be  two,  they  are  two  so 

As  stiffe  twin  compasses  are  two, 
Thy  soule  the  fixt  foot,  makes  no  show 

To  move,  but  doth,  if  the'  other  doe. 
And  though  it  in  the  center  sit, 

Yet  when  the  other  far  doth  rome, 
It  leanes,  and  hearkens  after  it, 

And  growes  erect,  as  that  comes  home. 

Pass  that:  but  what  shall  we  say  to  this? 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets          131 

As  the  sweet  sweat  of  Roses  in  a  Still, 

As  that  which  from  chaf 'd  muskats  pores  doth  trill, 

As  the  Almighty  Balme  of  th'  early  East, 

Such  are  the  sweat  drops  of  my  Mistris  breast. 


VIII 

George  Herbert — of  the  family  of  the  great  Earls  of 
Pembroke,  though  of  a  cadet  branch — was  born  the 
3rd  of  April,  1593,  in  the  castle  of  Montgomery;  the 
fifth  of  seven  sons  of  Sir  Richard  Herbert  and  his 
wife  Magdalen,  and  younger  brother  of  Edward,  Lord 
Herbert  of  Cherbury.  Sir  Richard,  whom  George  re- 
membered as  a  black-avised,  well-knit,  capable  man, 
brave  and  somewhat  stern,  died  in  the  boy's  fourth  year 
and  sleeps  under  an  alabaster  tomb  in  Montgomery 
church.  The  widow  thereafter  consecrated  her  life  to 
her  children.  She  did  "often  bless  God,  that  they  were 
neither  defective  in  their  shapes,  or  in  their  reason ;  and 
very  often  reprove  them  that  they  did  not  praise  God 
for  so  great  a  blessing. ' '  On  her  death  George  lamented 
her  in  one  of  the  most  exquisite  elegies  ever  written 
in  Latin  by  an  Englishman : 

Tota  renident  aede  decus  et  suavitas 
Animo  renidentes  prius. 

With  comeliness  and  kindness  shone  the  whole 
House,  for  they  first  were  radiant  in  her  soul. 

The  close  friend  and  adviser  of  her  widowhood  (pray 
note)  was  Donne,  Dean  of  St.  Paul's,  and  Donne 
eulogised  her  in  a  poem  The  Autumnal,  and  preached  her 
funeral  sermon.  Donne  was  also  a  constant  friend  of 


132  Studies  in  Literature 

George  Herbert,  and  sent  him  a  gift,  a  seal,  from  his 
death-bed. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  speak  of  the  eldest  boy, 
Herbert  of  Cherbury,  philosopher,  duellist,  diplomatist, 
poet  and  most  remarkable  fop  of  his  age.  All  the 
Herberts  have  had  "blood";  from  Charlemagne,  to 
whom  they  seriously  trace  back  their  descent,  to  Sid- 
ney Herbert,  War  Minister  and  friend  of  Florence  Night- 
ingale— to  carry  it  no  farther. 

But  we  speak  of  George.  At  twelve  he  was  sent  to 
Westminster  School,  where  (says  Walton)  "the  beauties 
of  his  pretty  behaviour  and  wit  shined,  and  became  so 
eminent  and  lovely  .  .  .  that  he  seemed  to  be  marked 
out  for  piety,  and  to  become  the  care  of  Heaven,  and  of 
a  particular  good  angel  to  guard  and  guide  him. ' '  From 
Westminster  he  proceeded  to  Trinity  here,  where  he 
stuck  to  his  books  and  was  in  due  time  elected  a  Fellow, 
becoming  Public  Orator  to  the  University  in  1619. 

As  yet  he  had  no  intention  to  devote  himself  to  the 
priesthood,  though  it  seems  that  his  mother  desired  it. 
On  the  contrary,  King  James's  frequent  visits  to  the 
University  set  the  young  Orator  dreaming  of  Court 
preferment.  With  his  high  birth,  his  acknowledged 
talents,  his  engaging  presence  and  manners  always 
singularly  attractive,  there  was  nothing  extravagant  in 
the  ambition,  and  we  hear  that  he  made  himself  master 
of  Italian,  Spanish  and  French  with  a  view  to  qualifying 
himself  for  a  Secretaryship  of  State.  But  the  two  great 
men  on  whose  favour  he  counted  died  just  then,  and 
King  James  soon  after.  "Nature,"  said  a  not  too 
friendly  critic,  "intended  him  for  a  knight-errant,  but 
disappointed  ambition  made  him  a  saint."  Well,  let 
us  be  thankful  for  saints,  however  they  come. 

With  or  without  a  sore  heart  Herbert  withdrew  from 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets          133 

Cambridge  and  spent  some  years  in  retirement,  the  end 
of  which  was  a  resolve  to  take  Holy  Orders.  As  he 
puts  it,  in  penitence : 

Whereas  my  birth  and  spirit  rather  took 

The  way  that  takes  the  town: 
Thou  didst  betray  me  to  a  lingering  book, 

And  wrapt  me  in  a  gown. 

In  1630  he  accepted  the  living  of  Bemerton  in  Wilt- 
shire, and  was  ordained  priest.  Meantime  he  had 
married  Jane  Danvers,  the  daughter  of  a  Wiltshire 
squire — according  to  Walton,  after  a  three  days' 
courtship — and 

The  third  day  after  he  was  made  Rector  of  Bemerton,  and 
had  changed  his  sword  and  silk  clothes  into  a  canonical  coat, 
he  returned  so  habited  .  .  .  and  immediately  after  he  had 
seen  and  saluted  his  wife,  he  said  to  her — "You  are  now  a 
Minister's  wife,  and  must  now  so  far  forget  your  father's 
house,  as  not  to  claim  a  precedence  of  any  of  your  parish- 
ioners: for  you  are  to  know,  that  a  Priest's  wife  can  claim 
no  precedence  or  place,  but  that  which  she  purchases  by 
her  obliging  humility."  .  .  .  And  she  was  so  meek  a  wife,  as 
to  assure  him,  "it  was  no  vexing  news  to  her,  and  that  he 
should  see  her  observe  it  with  a  cheerful  willingness." 

And  this  good  wife  was  as  good  as  her  word — Walton 
adds,  the  love  of  her  parishioners  "followed  her  in  all 
places,  as  inseparably  as  shadows  follow  substances  in 
sunshine." 

If  ever  two  lives  illustrated  the  beauty  of  holiness 
they  were  those  lived  by  George  and  Jane  Herbert  at 
Bemerton;  dull  lives,  intent  mainly  on  parish  work,  or 
repairing  church  or  chapel  or  rectory,  over  the  mantel 
of  the  chimney  of  which  he  graved  for  his  successor: 


134  Studies  in  Literature 

If  thou  chance  for  to  find 
A  new  house  to  thy  mind, 
And  built  without  thy  cost; 

Be  good  to  the  poor, 

As  God  gives  thee  store, 
And  then  my  labour's  not  lost. 

It  was  a  homely,  homekeeping  life,  diversified  only  by 
trips  into  Salisbury — the  Rector  with  a  fiddle  under 
his  arm — to  hear  and  join  in  music,  of  which  he  was 
passionately  fond.  But  when  the  bell  rang  in  the 
parsonage  chapel,  as  it  did  twice  daily,  the  labourers 
in  the  fields  let  their  oxen  rest  and  bowed  over  a  prayer. 
Let  me  read  one  short  passage  from  Walton:  for  it 
ends  on  one  of  my  favourite  quotations,  which  you 
may  recognise : 

In  another  walk  to  Salisbury,  he  saw  a  poor  man  with  a 
poorer  horse,  that  was  fallen  under  his  load:  they  were  both 
in  distress,  and  needed  present  help;  which  Mr.  Herbert 
perceiving,  put  off  his  canonical  coat,  and  helped  the  poor 
man  to  unload,  and  after  to  load,  his  horse.  The  poor  man 
blessed  him  for  it,  and  he  blessed  the  poor  man;  and  was 
so  like  the  Good  Samaritan,  that  he  gave  him  money  to 
refresh  both  himself  and  his  horse;  and  told  him,  "That  if 
he  loved  himself  he  should  be  merciful  to  his  beast."  Thus 
he  left  the  poor  man:  and  at  his  coming  to  his  musical 
friends  at  Salisbury,  they  began  to  wonder  that  Mr.  George 
Herbert,  which  used  to  be  so  trim  and  clean,  came  into  that 
company  so  soiled  and  discomposed:  but  he  told  them  the 
occasion.  And  when  one  of  the  company  told  him  "He 
had  disparaged  himself  by  so  dirty  an  employment,"  his 
answer  was,  "That  the  thought  of  what  he  had  done  would 
prove  music  to  him  at  midnight;  and  that  the  omission  of  it 
would  have  upbraided  and  made  discord  in  his  conscience, 
whensoever  he  should  pass  by  that  place:  for  if  I  be  bound 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets          135 

to  pray  for  all  that  be  in  distress,  I  am  sure  that  I  am 
bound,  so  far  as  it  is  in  my  power,  to  practice  what  I  pray 
for.  And  though  I  do  not  wish  for  the  like  occasion  every 
day,  yet  let  me  tell  you,  I  would  not  willingly  pass  one  day 
of  my  life  without  comforting  a  sad  soul,  or  shewing  mercy ; 
and  I  praise  God  for  this  occasion.  And  now  let's  tune  our 
instruments." 

A  life — as  you  read  of  it  in  Walton — so  delicately 
holy,  so  fragrant  of  the  Wiltshire  water  meadows  along 
which  the  biographer  himself  wandered  with  his  rod, 
fishing  for  trout  and  "studying  to  be  quiet,"  that  it 
seemed  made  to  tick  on  and  on  like  a  well-oiled  clock! 
But  Herbert  had  brought  the  seeds  of  consumption  in 
him  from  the  fens  of  Cambridge.  He  knew  it,  and, 
in  Dr.  Grosart's  words,  "he  not  merely  walked  down 
the  'valley  of  the  shadow  of  death' — knowing  no 
'fear'  and  so  making  no  'haste' —  but  sang."  A  little 
before  the  end  he  withdrew  from  Bemerton  to  lodge 
with  his  friend  Nicholas  Ferrar  at  Little  Gidding  in 
Huntingdon,  that  famous  religious  house  of  retirement. 
There  he  died,  and  was  buried  on  the  3rd  day  of  March, 
1633.  Upon  a  most  touching,  most  eloquent  descrip- 
tion of  the  end,  and,  after  it,  upon  a  pause,  "Thus  he 
lived,  and  thus  he  died,  like  a  Saint,  unspotted  of  the 
world,  full  of  alms-deeds,  full  of  humility,"  Walton 
(sad  to  say)  concludes  with  a  bad  misquotation  of 
Shirley's : 

Only  the  actions  of  the  just 

Smell  sweet  and  blossom  in  their  dust. 

Had  he  remembered  even  a  little  bit  better,  he  might 
have  quoted  the  same  thought  from  a  poem  of  Herbert's 
own,  and  nowadays  his  most  famous.  I  mean  the  one 
beginning 


136  Studies  in  Literature 

Sweet  day,  so  cool,  so  calm,  so  bright! 
The  bridal  of  the  earth  and  sky. 

But  the  close,  being  marred  by  conceits,  is  far  inferior 
to  Shirley's, 

Only  a  sweet  and  virtuous  soul, 
Like  season 'd  timber,  never  gives; 

But  though  the  whole  world  turn  to  coal, 
Then  chiefly  lives.  .  .  . 

which  offends,  even  after  we  have  reminded  ourselves 
that  "coal,"  in  Herbert's  day,  meant  charcoal.  But 
that  is  always  the  trouble  with  Herbert.  The  example 
of  Donne  had  infected  him,  who  possessed  scarcely  a 
tithe  of  Donne's  wit ;  so  that  he  is  always  saving  beauti- 
ful things  and  always  spoiling  (for  us)  his  best  lyrics. 
Very  few  are  flawless.  Now  and  then  he  can  make  a 
conceit  lovely,  as  when  of  man's  heavenly  comfort  he 
writes 

Not  that  he  may  not  here 

Taste  of  the  cheer, 

But  as  birds  drink,  and  straight  lift  up  their  head, 
So  must  he  sip  and  think 

Of  better  drink 
He  may  attain  to,  after  he  is  dead. 

And  even  a  pun  (you  know)  may  be  made  lovely  by 
emotion.  Witness  this  little  one  in  Hood's  Song  of 
the  Shirt: 

Work — work — work,  .  .  . 
While  underneath  the  eaves 

The  brooding  swallows  cling 
As  if  to  show  me  their  sunny  backs 

And  twit  me  with  the  spring. 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets          137 


But  when,  of  man's  declension  from  childish  innocence, 
Herbert  says 

The  growth  of  flesh  is  but  a  blister 

we  must  demur. 

It  is  the  trouble  with  Herbert,  among  many  beauties 
to  find  any  unflawed  by  this  fault.  I  know  three  or 
four  only.  Let  me  read  you  two : 

Discipline 


Throw  away  Thy  rod, 
Throw  away  Thy  wrath; 

0  my  God, 

Take  the  gentle  path! 

For  my  heart's  desire 
Unto  Thine  is  bent: 

1  aspire 

To  a  full  consent. 

Not  a  word  or  look 
I  affect  to  own, 
But  by  book, 
And  Thy  Book  alone. 

Though  I  fail,  I  weep; 
Though  I  halt  in  pace, 

Yet  I  creep 
To  the  throne  of  grace. 


Then  let  wrath  remove; 
Love  will  do  the  deed; 

For  with  love 
Stony  hearts  will  bleed. 

Love  is  swift  cf  foot; 
Love's  a  man  of  war, 

And  can  shoot, 
And  can  hit  from  far. 

Who  can  'scape  his  bow? 
That  which  wrought  on  Thee, 

Brought  Thee  low, 
Needs  must  work  on  me. 

Throw  away  Thy  rod; 
Though  man  frailties  hath, 

Thou  art  God: 
Throw  away  Thy  wrath ! 


Love 


Love  bade  me  welcome;  yet  my  soul  drew  back, 

Guilty  of  dust  and  sin. 
But  quick-eyed  Love,  observing  me  grow  slack 

From  my  first  entrance  in, 
Drew  nearer  to  me,  sweetly  questioning 

If  I  lack'd  anything. 


138  Studies  in  Literature 

"A  guest,"  I  answer'd,  "worthy  to  be  here": 

Love  said,  "You  shall  be  he." 
"I,  the  unkind,  ungrateful?     Ah,  my  dear, 

I  cannot  look  on  Thee." 
Love  took  my  hand  and  smiling  did  reply, 

"Who  made  the  eyes  but  I?" 

"Truth,  Lord;  but  I  have  marr'd  them:  let  my  shame 

Go  where  it  doth  deserve." 
"And  know  you  not,"  says  Love,  "Who  bore  the  blame?  " 

"My  dear,  then  I  will  serve." 
"You  must  sit  down,"  says  Love,  "and  taste  my  meat." 

So  I  did  sit  and  eat. 

It  seems  almost  desecrating  to  draw  your  attention  down 
to  the  mere  technique  of  so  lovely,  so  apparently  abso- 
lute a  thing.  Yet  I  think  you  will  admire  it  none  the 
less  for  noting  the  masterly  use  of  monosyllables  and 
the  exquisite  sense  of  pause,  hesitancy  and  finally 
command,  produced  by  it : 

Love  said,  "You  shall  be  he." 

"And  know  you  not,"  says  Love,  "Who  bore  the  blame?" 

"My  dear,  then  I  will  serve." 
"You  must  sit  down,"  says  Love,  "and  taste  my  meat." 

So  I  did  sit  and  eat. 

Monosyllables  throughout. 
IX 

The  Herberts  were  a  high  family.  But  in  Wales 
dwelt  another  hardly  less  noble,  the  Vaughans :  and  the 
two  had  preserved  an  ancient  inveterate  feud.  Of  the 
Vaughans  in  1622  was  born  the  poet  Henry,  in  Breck- 
nockshire at  Llansaintffraed  on  the  bank  of  the  Usk. 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets          139 

He  was  a  twin  child.  We  know  little  of  his  parents, 
though  that  old  gossip  Aubrey,  who  happened  to  be 
a  relative,  informs  us  with  a  relative's  outspokenness 
that  the  father  was  "a  coxcomb  and  no  honester  than 
he  should  be — He  cozened  me  out  of  505.  once." 

The  twin  brothers  Henry  and  Thomas  received  their 
schooling  from  a  clergyman  hard  by ;  and  in  due  course 
both  went  up  to  Jesus  College,  Oxford ;  then,  as  today, 
the  resort  of  young  Welshmen.  Thomas  took  his 
degree,  and  entered  Holy  Orders;  became  rector  of 
his  native  parish,  but  was  ejected  by  the  Parliamentary 
Commissioners;  returned  to  Oxford;  studied  alchemy 
and  wrote  of  it  under  the  name  Eugenius  Philalethes; 
wrote  some  English  and  Latin  verse  too;  and  died  in 
1666.  Henry  left  the  university  without  taking  a 
degree;  studied  law  in  London;  got  entangled  in 
politics,  on  the  royalist  side:  lost  his  money  and  hopes 
of  a  career  at  the  bar;  fell  back  upon  medicine  and 
retired  to  Brecknockshire,  where  among  his  native  hills 
and  beside  his  beloved  Usk  he  won  such  present  fame 
and  awards  as  attend  a  benevolent  medical  practitioner 
in  the  country ;  and  in  the  intervals  of  his  practice  trans- 
lated some  devotional  prose  works  and  left  the  poems 
we  possess.  He  died  in  1695  at  the  age  of  seventy- 
three — a  fairly  long  life;  but,  as  you  see,  quite  a  short 
story. 

The  first  and  most  obvious  remark  upon  Vaughan  is 
that  his  genius  was  largely  imitative;  the  next  and 
almost  as  obvious,  that  it  was  curiously  original. 

For  the  imitation,  his  debt  to  Herbert  is  often  patent, 
sometimes  flagrant ;  and  indeed  here  and  there  amounts 
to  downright  literary  pilfering.  For  a  couple  of  ex- 
amples— in  Herbert's  poem  The  Agonie  occurs  this 
conceit — the  beauty  of  which  lifts  it  into  a  thought : 


140  Studies  in  Literature 

Love  is  that  liquor  sweet  and  most  divine 
Which  my  God  feels  as  blood,  but  I,  as  wine. 

Turn  to  Vaughan's  poem  The  Passion  and  read 

Most  blessed  Vine! 

Whose  juice  so  good 

I  feel  as  Wine, 
But  thy  faire  branches  felt  as  blood. 

The  art  of  pilfering  and  spoiling  could  scarcely  be  better 
illustrated.  The  verse,  as  verse,  is  poorer:  and  the 
obtruded  personification  of  the  Vine  robs  Herbert's 
fancy  of  half  his  delicacy,  converting  a  subtle  metaphor 
into  a  flat  simile.  Take  a  second  example. — Herbert 
in  his  Providence  writes 

Rain,  do  not  hurt  my  flowers;  but  gently  spend 
Your  hony-drops. 

Vaughan  in  his  Rainbow  again  conveys  and  spoils: 

When  thou  dost  shine  darkness  looks  white  and  fair, 
Forms  turn  to  Musick,  clouds  to  smiles  and  air: 
Rain  gently  spends  his  honey-drops.  .  .  . 

But  the  sum  of  these  direct  borrowings  by  no  means 
exhausts — does  not  begin  to  exhaust — Vaughan's  debt 
to  Herbert;  as  anyone  may  convince  himself  by  half- 
an-hour's  study  of  their  poems  side  by  side.  (We  must 
always  remember  however  that  plagiarism,  in  days  when 
poets  rarely  printed  their  poems,  but  circulated  them  in 
MS.  among  friends  was  by  no  means  the  crime  a  later 
age  has  made  it.  It  did  the  robbed  one  no  commercial 
injury.)  The  influence  of  Herbert  pervades  and  is  felt 
everywhere.  In  the  invention  of  "conceits,'  too, 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets          141 

Vaughan  the  more  certainly  stamps  himself  the  imitator 
the  more  audaciously  he  goes  (as  we  should  say)  one 
better  than  his  master.  Herbert  can  be  quaint:  but 
Herbert  must  resign  and  lay  down  his  arms  before  such 
a  stanza  as  this  describing  daybreak: 

But,  as  in  nature,  when  the  day 

Breaks,  night  adjourns, 
Stars  shut  up  shop,  mists  pack  away, 

And  the  moon  mourns. 


Stars  "shut  up  shop"!    Et  sunt  commercia  coeli  with  a 
vengeance ! 

So  much  for  the  debit  side;  now  for  the  credit.  At 
first  sight  it  seems  a  paradox  to  claim  that  a  poet  so 
imitative  is  actually  more  original  and  certainly  of 
deeper  insight  as  well  as  of  ampler,  more  celestial  range 
than  the  man  he  copied.  And  yet  it  is  so,  as  I  think 
almost  anyone  will  confess  after  reading  Vaughan 's 
Eternity  or  The  Timber: 

Sure  thou  didst  flourish  once!  and  many  springs, 
Many  bright  mornings,  much  dew,  many  showers, 

Pass'd  o'er  thy  head;  many  light  hearts  and  wings, 
Which  now  are  dead,  lodged  in  thy  living  bowers. 

And  still  a  new  succession  sings  and  flies; 

Fresh  groves  grow  up,  and  their  green  branches  shoot 
Towards  the  old  and  still  enduring  skies, 

While  the  low  violet  thrives  at  their  root. 

But  thou  beneath  the  sad  and  heavy  line 

Of  death,  doth  waste  all  senseless,  cold,  and  dark; 

Where  not  so  much  as  dreams  of  light  may  shine, 
Nor  any  thought  of  greenness,  leaf,  or  bark. 


142  Studies  in  Literature 

And  yet — as  if  some  deep  hate  and  dissent, 

Bred  in  thy  growth  betwixt  high  winds  and  thee, 

Were  still  alive — thou  dost  great  storms  resent 
Before  they  come,  and  know'st  how  near  they  be. 

Else  all  at  rest  thou  liest,  and  the  fierce  breath 
Of  tempests  can  no  more  disturb  thy  ease; 

But  this  thy  strange  resentment  after  death 

Means  only  those  who  broke — in  life — thy  peace. 

Or  this  poem  on  Friends  Departed,  of  which  I  will  read 
some  verses : 

They  are  all  gone  into  the  world  of  light! 

And  I  alone  sit  ling'ring  here; 
Their  very  memory  is  fair  and  bright, 
And  my  sad  thoughts  doth  clear. 

It  glows  and  glitters  in  my  cloudy  breast, 

Like  stars  upon  some  gloomy  grove, 
Or  those  faint  beams  in  which  this  hill  is  drest 
After  the  sun's  remove. 

I  see  them  walking  in  an  air  of  glory, 

Whose  light  doth  trample  on  my  days: 
My  days,  which  are  at  best  but  dull  and  hoary, 
Mere  glimmering  and  decays. 

O  holy  Hope!  and  high  Humility, 

High  as  the  heavens  above! 

These  are  your  walks,  and  you  have  show'd  them  me, 
To  kindle  my  cold  love. 

Dear,  beauteous  Death !  the  jewel  of  the  Just, 

Shining  nowhere,  but  in  the  dark; 

What  mysteries  do  lie  beyond  thy  dust, 

Could  man  outlook  that  mark ! 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets          143 

He  that  hath  found  some  fledged  bird's  nest  may  know, 

At  first  sight,  if  the  bird  be  flown; 
But  what  fair  well  or  grove  he  sings  in  now, 
That  is  to  him  unknown. 

And  yet  as  Angels  in  some  brighter  dreams 

Call  to  the  soul,  when  man  doth  sleep: 
So  some  strange  thoughts  transcend  our  wonted  themes, 
And  into  glory  peep. 

If  a  star  were  confined  into  a  tomb, 

Her  captive  flames  must  needs  burn  there; 
But  when  the  hand  that  lock'd  her  up  gives  room, 
She'll  shine  through  all  the  sphere. 

O  Father  of  eternal  life,  and  all 
Created  glories  under  Thee! 
Resume  Thy  spirit  from  this  world  of  thrall 
Into  true  liberty. 

Either  disperse  these  mists,  which  blot  and  fill 

My  perspective  still  as  they  pass: 
Or  else  remove  me  hence  unto  that  hill, 
Where  I  shall  need  no  glass. 

The  paradox  is  not  so  strange  as  it  appears.  Some 
most  original  men — Vaughan  among  them — want  start- 
ing. They  have  the  soluble  genius  within  them,  but 
it  will  not  crystallise  of  itself;  it  must  have  a  shape, 
a  mould.  And  such  men  take  the  mould  supplied  by 
their  age:  it  may  not  be  the  best  for  them,  but  it  is 
what  comes  to  hand.  That  Vaughan 's  "conceits"  are 
often  abominably  bad  where  Herbert's  were  good,  does 
not  prove  him  the  lesser  genius.  Rather,  the  argument 
may  lie  the  other  way — that  he  executed  them  badly 
because  he  was  naturally  superior  to  such  devices, 


144  Studies  in  Literature 

whereas  they  fitted  Herbert's  cleverer  talent  like  a 
glove.  To  prove  how  simple  and  direct  Vaughan  could 
be  when  he  chose  I  will  conclude  this  sketch  of  him 
with  a  short  and  well-known  poem  quite  free  of  conceits. 
It  is  called  Peace  : 

My  soul,  there  is  a  country 

Far  beyond  the  stars, 
Where  stands  a  winged  sentry 

All  skilful  in  the  wars: 
There,  above  noise  and  danger, 

Sweet  Peace  sits  crown'd  with  smiles, 
And  One  born  in  a  manger 

Commands  the  beauteous  files. 
He  is  thy  gracious  Friend, 

And — 0  my  soul,  awake! — 
Did  in  pure  love  descend 

To  die  here  for  thy  sake. 
If  thou  canst  get  but  thither, 

There  grows  the  flower  of  Peace, 
The  Rose  that  cannot  wither, 

Thy  fortress,  and  thy  ease. 
Leave  then  thy  foolish  ranges; 

For  none  can  thee  secure 
But  One  who  never  changes — 

Thy  God,  thy  life,  thy  cure. 

I  propose  in  my  next  lecture,  Gentlemen,  to  start  by 
examining  one  most  important  poem  of  Vaughan's, 
which  will  lead  us  on  to  deal  expeditiously  with  Tra- 
herne,  Quarles,  the  two  Fletchers,  Crashaw,  and  maybe 
one  or  two  other  poets  on  this  line  of  spiritual  ancestry. 

Yet  one  last  word,  which  I  had  almost  forgotten. 
Can  you  not  see  that,  while  we  have  mystics  among  us, 
death  for  our  literature  is  impossible?  No  school- 
master, even,  can  kill  an  instinct  which  lifts  the  heads 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets  145 

of  all  nobler  young  spirits  to  look  past  his  herding, 
for  they  scent  the  high  water-brooks.  So  mysticism  too, 
in  its  turn,  witnesses  and  guarantees  that  until  the  soul 
of  man  be  dust,  literature  shall  be  alive. 


III.     TRAHERNE,  CRASHAW  AND  OTHERS 

I 

EVERYONE   knows  Wordsworth's  ode  Intimations 
of  Immortality  from  Recollections  of  Early  Child- 
hood: and  the  stanza 

Our  birth  is  but  a  sleep  and  a  forgetting; 
The  Soul  that  rises  with  us,  our  life's  Star, 

Hath  had  elsewhere  its  setting, 
And  cometh  from  afar: 

Not  in  entire  forgetfulness, 

And  not  in  utter  nakedness, 
But  trailing  clouds  of  glory  do  we  come 

From  God,  who  is  our  home: 
Heaven  lies  about  us  in  our  infancy.  .  .  . 

I  need  rehearse  no  more.  And  almost  everyone  knows 
— or,  to  speak  accurately,  has  been  told  (which  is  a 
somewhat  different  thing) — that  Wordsworth  borrowed 
his  thought  from  Vaughan's  famous  poem  The  Retreat: 

Happy  those  early  days,  when  I 
Shined  in  my  Angel-infancy ! 
Before  I  understood  this  place 
Appointed  for  my  second  race, 
Or  taught  my  soul  to  fancy  aught 
But  a  white  celestial  thought : 
When  yet  I  had  not  walk'd  above 
A  mile  or  two  from  my  first  Love  .  .  . 
146 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets  147 

When  on  some  gilded  cloud,  or  flow'r 
My  "gazing  soul  would  dwell  an  hour, 
And  in  those  weaker  glories  spy 
Some  shadows  of  Eternity. 

Now  very  likely,  indeed,  Wordsworth  took  it  from 
Vaughan:  but  quite  as  easily  he  might  have  taken  it 
from  any  one  of  a  score  of  the  seventeenth  century 
writers  with  whom  we  are  dealing.  With  them  man's 
fall  from  grace  was  a  preoccupation.  How  does  the 
greatest  of  them  begin  his  greatest  poem  ? 

Of  Man's  first  disobedience,  and  the  fruit 
Of  that  forbidden  Tree,  whose  mortal  taste 
Brought  death  into  the  World,  and  all  our  woe, 
With  loss  of  Eden,  till  one  greater  Man 
Restore  us,  and  regain  the  blissful  seat, 
Sing,  Heavenly  Muse! 

Please  understand  that  I  do  no  more  here  than  assert 
a  historical  fact,  expressing  no  opinion  outside  the 
province  of  this  Chair  as  by  Statute  restricted;  that  I 
have  not  the  authority,  nor  the  leisure,  nor  (anyway) 
the  inclination  to  re-start  the  Pelagian  heresy  in  Cam- 
bridge. I  simply  affirm,  without  comment,  that  these 
theological  poets  and  preachers  of  the  seventeenth 
century — happy  though  they  were  in  having  no  Dar- 
winian hypothesis  of  man's  descent  to  answer — were 
intrigued — almost,  you  may  say,  one  and  all — by  man's 
lapse  from  a  state  of  innocence.  You  may  pursue  their 
curiosity  about  this  down  (say)  to  Dr.  South,  who  was 
born  in  1633  and  died  a  Canon  of  Christchurch  at 
eighty-three — so  that,  if  actual  experience  or  obser- 
vation could  attest  man's  depravity,  he  had,  as  men 
go,  plenty  of  both.  Take  up  a  sermon  of  his,  Human 
Perfection :  or  Adam  in  Paradise,  and  read 


148  Studies  in  Literature 

The  image  of  God  in  man  [he  writes]  is  that  universal 
rectitude  of  all  the  faculties  of  the  soul,  by  which  they  stand 
apt  and  disposed  to  their  respective  duties  and  operations. 

And  first  for  its  noblest  faculty,  the  understanding:  it  was 
then  [i.e.,  in  Paradise]  sublime,  clear  and  inspiring,  and,  as  it 
were,  the  soul's  upper  region,  lofty  and  serene,  free  from  the 
vapours  and  disturbances  of  the  inferior  affections.  It  was 
the  leading  controlling  faculty;  all  the  passions  wore  the 
colours  of  reason;  it  did  not  so  much  persuade  as  command; 
it  was  not  counsel  but  dictator  ...  It  did  not  so  properly 
apprehend  as  irradiate  the  object ;  not  so  much  find,  as  make 
things  intelligible.  It  did  arbitrate  upon  the  several  reports 
of  sense  and  all  varieties  of  imagination:  not  like  a  drowsy 
judge,  only  hearing,  but  also  directing  their  verdict.  In 
sum,  it  was  vegete,  quick  and  lively;  open  as  the  day, 
untainted  as  the  morning,  full  of  the  innocence  and  sprightli- 
ness  of  youth;  it  gave  the  soul  a  bright  and  full  view  into 
all  things. 

South  then  divides  this  Understanding  into  Under- 
standing Speculative,  which  gives  the  mind  its  general 
notions  and  rules,  and  the  Practical  Understanding, 
"that  storehouse  of  the  soul  in  which  are  treasured  up 
the  rules  of  action  and  the  seeds  of  morality.  Of  the 
first,  the  Speculative  Understanding  with  its  notions, 
he  goes  on: 

Now  it  was  Adam's  happiness  in  the  State  of  Innocence  to 
have  these  clear  and  unsullied.  He  came  into  the  world  a 
philosopher.  He  could  see  consequences  yet  dormant  in 
their  principles,  and  effects  yet  unborn  and  in  the  womb  of 
their  causes;  his  understanding  could  almost  pierce  into 
future  contingents;  his  conjectures  improving  even  to  pro- 
phecy, or  to  certainties  of  prediction:  till  his  fall  it  was 
ignorant  of  nothing  but  of  sin;  or  at  least  it  rested  in  the 
notion  without  the  smart  of  the  experiment.  Could  any 
difficulty  have  been  propounded,  the  solution  would  have 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets          149 

been  as  early  as  the  proposal.  .  .  .  Like  a  better  Archi- 
medes, the  issue  of  all  his  enquiries  was  an  eupiqxa.  An 
eupt]xa,  the  offspring  of  his  brain  without  the  sweat  of  his 
brow.  ...  An  Aristotle  was  but  the  rubbish  of  an  Adam, 
and  Athens  but  the  rudiments  of  Paradise. 


Now  if  you  ask  me,  Gentlemen,  what  I  think  of  that, 
as  prose,  I  answer  that  I  find  it  not  half  as  good  as  it 
looks.  If  you  ask  me  what  I  think  of  its  doctrine,  I 
answer  that  I  don't  believe  a  word  of  it :  that  the  learned 
Dr.  South  is  dispensing  positive  information  on  a  sub- 
ject of  which  he  is  as  ignorant  as  anyone  else.  Adam's 
"understanding  could  almost  pierce  into  future  con- 
tingents. ' '  Why  ' '  almost ' '  ?  Why,  because  there  was, 
as  King  George  III  said  of  the  dumpling,  the  apple  to  be 
accounted  for.  So  when,  of  the  practical  understanding, 
South  goes  on  to  instance  such  maxims  as  ' '  That  God  is 
to  be  worshipped, "  "That  parents  are  to  be  honoured, " 
"That  a  man's  word  is  to  be  kept, "  I  ask  concerning  the 
middle  proposition,  what  Adam  could  possibly  know 
about  parents,  or  at  that  time  even  about  children, 
having  neither?  As  when  South  assures  us,  of  Love, 
that  "this  affection,  in  the  state  of  innocence,  was 
happily  pitched  upon  its  right  object,"  I  cannot  forgo 
the  reflection  that,  after  all,  there  was  but  one  lady  in 
the  garden.  Forgive  me  that  I  speak  brusquely.  In 
my  belief  the  first  three  chapters  of  Genesis  contain 
nothing  to  justify  South;  and  in  my  belief  no  handling 
can  well  be  too  rough-and-ready  for  one  who  expands 
himself  so  pretentiously  upon  ground  where  an  angel 
might  be  diffident. 

But  this  is  opinion :  and  I  have  quoted  South's  sermon, 
not  for  what  it  is  worth  as  opinion,  but  for  what  it  is 
worth  as  evidence  of  a  historical  fact — that  the  minds 


150  Studies  in  Literature 

of  the  seventeenth  century  played  more  persistently 
than  do  ours  with  the  picture  of  a  state  of  innocence  and 
the  way  of  man's  fall  from  it,  and,  by  consequence, 
with  the  notion  which  Wordsworth  afterwards  elabo- 
rated— the  notion  of  an  ante-natal  realm  of  bliss  out  of 
which  the  child  descends  (as  the  children  you  may 
remember  in  Maeterlinck's  Oiseau  Bleu,  the  little  ones 
waiting  to  be  born),  to  lose  his  ineffable  aura  as  this 
world  entraps  him,  encloses  him  in  the  shades  of  its 
prison-house. 

Let  us  turn  to  a  more  delicate  mind  than  South's,  and 
consult  the  Platonist  John  Earle.  These  seventeenth 
century  men,  as  you  know,  were  much  given  to  penning 
Characters  more  or  less  in  imitation  of  the  Characters 
of  Theophrastus.  It  was  a  literary  craze  in  its  day; 
and  not  seldom,  to  my  thinking,  they  achieved  things 
far  more  philosophical,  as  well  as  far  more  poetical, 
than  any  in  Theophrastus's  range.  Here  is  what  John 
Earle,  in  his  Microcosmographie,  writes  of  "A  Child": 

A  Child 

He  is  nature's  fresh  picture  newly  drawn  in  oil;  which 
time,  and  much  handling,  dims  and  defaces.  His  soul  is 
yet  a  white  paper  unscribbled  with  observations  of  the 
world,  wherewith  at  length  it  becomes  a  blurred  note-book. 
He  is  purely  happy  because  he  knows  no  evil,  nor  hath  made 
means  by  sin  to  be  acquainted  with  misery.  He  arrives 
not  at  the  mischief  of  being  wise,  nor  endures  evils  to  come 
by  foreseeing  them.  He  kisses  and  loves  all,  and,  when  the 
smart  of  the  rod  is  past,  smiles  on  his  beater.  .  .  . 

We  laugh  at  his  foolish  sports,  but  his  game  is  our  earnest : 
and  his  drums,  rattles  and  hobby-horses  but  the  emblems 
and  mockings  of  men's  business.  His  father  hath  writ 
him  as  his  own  little  story,  wherein  he  reads  those  days  of 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets          151 

his  life  that  he  cannot  remember,  and  sighs  to  see  what 
innocence  he  has  outlived.  The  elder  he  grows  he  is  a  stair 
lower  from  God;  and  like  his  first  father  much  worse  in  his 
breeches. 

He  is  the  Christian's  example,  and  the  old  man's  relapse; 
the  one  imitates  his  pureness,  and  the  other  falls  into  his 
simplicity.  Could  he  put  off  his  body  with  his  little  coat, 
he  had  got  Eternity  without  a  burthen,  and  exchanged  but 
one  heaven  for  another. 

II 

But  for  faith  in  this  notion  which  Earle  treated  so 
playfully,  and  for  burning  fervour  in  that  faith  we  must 
go  to  a  lowly  follower  of  Herbert  and  Vaughan,  to  an 
exceedingly  humble  man  of  heart — Thomas  Traherne. 

Who  was  Traherne?  Well,  we  know  him  now  to 
have  been  a  poor  Welsh  parson,  born  in  1636  or  there- 
abouts, somewhere  on  the  Welsh  border  (likeliest  at 
Hereford),  the  son  of  a  shoemaker;  that  somehow  in 
1652  he  managed  to  enter  at  Brasenose  College,  Oxford, 
was  made  Bachelor  of  Arts  in  1656,  Master  of  Arts  in 
1661,  Bachelor  of  Divinity  in  1669;  that  he  took  Orders 
and  became  vicar  of  Credenhill,  in  Herefordshire,  about 
1661;  where,  he  tells  us,  "being  seated  among  silent 
trees,  and  meads  and  hills  "  he  made  a  resolve  to  cling  to 
this  childish  felicity.  Yes,  "  I  chose  rather  to  live  upon 
ten  pounds  a  year,  and  to  go  in  leather  clothes,  and 
feed  upon  bread  and  water,  so  that  I  might  have  all  my 
time  clearly  to  myself";  that  after  nine  years  or  so  he 
was  removed  to  London  to  be  chaplain  to  Sir  Orlando 
Bridgman,  Lord  Keeper  of  the  Seals,  and  that  he  died 
in  Bridgman's  house  at  Teddington  in  October,  1674, 
aged  but  thirty-eight. 

For  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  his  writings  were 


152  Studies  in  Literature 

lost,  and  his  name  was  not  even  the  shade  of  a  name. 
When,  in  1896  or  1897,  a  Mr.  Brooks  picked  up  two 
innominate  volumes  in  MS.  for  a  few  pence  at  a  street 
bookstall,  and  submitted  them  to  Dr.  Grosart,  that 
veteran  at  once  and  excusably  pronounced  them  to  be 
the  work  of  Vaughan  and  set  about  including  them  in 
a  new  edition  of  Vaughan  which,  just  before  his  death, 
he  was  endeavouring  to  find  means  to  publish.  On  his 
death,  his  library  being  dispersed,  the  volumes  again 
started  wandering.  It  were  a  fascinating  story — had  I 
the  time  to  tell  it — how  they  came  into  the  hands  of 
the  late  Mr.  Bertram  Dobell,  most  lovable  of  booksellers 
(which  is  saying  a  great  deal),  how  Mr.  Dobell  hit  on  a 
clue,  followed  it,  and  discovered  the  true  author,  and 
how  later  a  third  MS.  not  bearing  Traherne's  name,  was 
found  in  the  British  Museum.  I  will  only  recount  my 
own  very  small  part  in  the  affair.  Seventeen  years  ago, 
when  preparing  the  Oxford  Book  of  English  Verse  I  was 
sent  by  the  late  Professor  York  Powell,  without  com- 
ment, a  bookseller's  catalogue  with  a  poem  on  its  back 
page.  It  was  the  poem  beginning  ' '  News  from  a  foreign 
country  came, "  part  of  which  I  read  to  you  a  fortnight 
ago.  I  made  enquiries,  and  Mr.  Dobell  very  kindly 
copied  out  some  other  poems  for  me — none  of  which, 
however,  seemed  to  me  quite  so  good  as  News,  which 
duly  went  into  the  Oxford  Book — and  with  them  some 
prose  passages  from  the  second  MS.  volume  entitled  Cen- 
turies of  Meditations.  I  wrote  back  that  the  prose 
seemed  to  me  even  finer  stuff  than  the  poems,  and 
urged  him  to  publish  it.  The  poems  appeared — that  is, 
first  saw  print — in  1903,  Centuries  of  Meditations  in  1908, 
and  I  cannot  forbear  telling  you  what  pleasure  it  was  to 
open  the  volume,  to  find  my  own  name  on  the  editor's 
page  of  dedication,  and  to  reflect  (a  little  wistfully  if 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets          153 

not  whimsically)  that  maybe  this  author,  forgotten  for 
two  hundred  and  fifty  years  might,  after  another  two 
hundred  and  fifty,  rescue  from  complete  oblivion  the 
name  of  another  who  had  admired  him. 

Well,  let  that  be — we  all  have  our  little  vanities. 
But  of  Traherne  himself  the  first  and  last  word  is  that 
he  carries  into  a  sustained  ecstasy  this  adoration  of  the 
wisdom  of  childhood — Regnum  Scientiae  ut  regnum  coeli 
non  nisi  sub  persona  infantis  intratur:  and  it  is  truly  mar- 
vellous how  the  man  can  harp  so  long  and  elaborately 
on  one  string.  I  have  said  that  his  verse,  in  my  opinion, 
ranks  lower  than  his  prose :  but  here  is  a  specimen : 

How  like  an  Angel  came  I  down ! 
How  bright  are  all  things  here! 
When  first  among  His  works  I  did  appear 
O  how  their  Glory  me  did  crown! 
The  world  resembled  his  Eternity 

In  which  my  soul  did  walk; 
And  everything  that  I  did  see 
Did  with  me  talk. 


The  streets  were  paved  with  golden  stones, 

The  boys  and  girls  were  mine, 
O  how  did  all  their  lovely  faces  shine! 
The  sons  of  men  were  holy  ones, 

In  joy  and  beauty  they  appear'd  to  me: 

And  every  thing  which  here  I  found, 
(While  like  an  angel  I  did  see) 
Adorn'd  the  ground. 

Proprieties  [properties]  themselves  were  mine, 

And  hedges  ornaments; 
Walls,  boxes,  coffers,  and  their  rich  contents 

Did  not  divide  my  joys,  but  all  combine. 


154  Studies  in  Literature 

Clothes,  ribbons,  jewels,  laces,  I  esteem'd 

My  joys  by  others  worn: 
For  me  they  all  to  wear  them  seem'd 
When  I  was  born. 

So  much  for  his  verse :  now  for  similar  thinking  in  prose: 

These  pure  and  virgin  apprehensions  I  had  from  the 
womb,  and  that  divine  light  wherewith  I  was  born  are  the 
best  unto  this  day,  wherein  I  can  see  the  Universe.  By 
the  Gift  of  God  they  attended  me  into  the  world,  and  by  His 
special  favour  I  remember  them  till  now.  .  .  . 

The  corn  was  orient  and  immortal  wheat,  which  never 
should  be  reaped,  nor  was  ever  sown.  I  thought  it  had 
stood  from  everlasting  to  everlasting.  The  dust  and  stones 
of  the  street  were  as  precious  as  gold :  the  gates  were  at  first 
the  end  of  the  world.  The  green  trees  when  I  saw  them  first 
through  one  of  the  gates  transported  and  ravished  me, 
their  .  .  .  unusual  beauty  made  my  heart  to  leap,  and  al- 
most mad  with  ecstasy,  they  were  such  strange  and  wonder- 
ful things.  The  Men!  O  what  venerable  and  revered 
creatures  did  the  aged  seem !  Immortal  Cherubims. 

At  this  point  I  break  off  to  wonder,  irreverently,  what 
Traherne  would  have  made  of  some  of  my  own  uncles 
and  aunts;  the  Calvinistic  one.  At  that  age  I  could 
have  spared  them  to  him  or  to  anyone  for  experiment. 

And  young  men  glittering  and  sparkling  Angels,  and 
maids  strange  seraphic  pieces  of  life  and  beauty !  Boys  and 
girls  tumbling  in  the  street,  and  playing,  were  moving 
jewels.  I  knew  not  that  they  were  born  or  should  die.  But 
all  things  abided  eternally  as  they  were  in  their  proper 
places.  .  .  .  The  city  seemed  to  stand  in  Eden,  or  to  be 
built  in  Heaven.  The  streets  were  mine,  the  temple  was 
mine,  the  people  were  mine,  their  clothes  and  gold  and 
silver  were  mine,  as  much  as  their  sparkling  eyes,  fair  skins 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets  155 

and  ruddy  faces.  The  skies  were  mine,  and  so  were  the  sun 
and  moon  and  stars,  and  all  the  World  was  mine;  and 
I  the  only  spectator  and  enjoyer  of  it.  ...  So  that  with 
much  ado  I  was  corrupted,  and  made  to  learn  the  dirty 
devices  of  this  world.  Which  now  I  unlearn,  and  become,  as 
it  were,  a  little  child  again  that  I  may  enter  into  the  King- 
dom of  God. 

So  much  then,  again,  for  Traherne.  But  before 
leaving  him  I  will  ask  you  to  note  that  Donne,  Herbert, 
Vaughan  and  he — the  four  whose  spiritual  kinship  we 
have  been  tracing,  came  all  by  ancestry,  proud  or  poor, 
from  the  Welsh  Marches.  Donne's  forefathers  were  of 
Wales  and  spelt  their  name  "Dwynne. "  The  Herberts 
were  lords  over  Pembroke,  the  Vaughans  over  Breck- 
nockshire, Traherne  a  poor  tradesman's  son  of  Hereford. 
I  distrust  generalisations:  but  there  would  seem  to  be 
something  here  in  "the  Celtic  spirit." 

Ill 

Before  taking  up  another  line  of  mystics  let  me  deal 
briefly  with  three  or  four  who  fall  to  be  mentioned 
here. 

Sir  John  Davies  (1570  or  thereabouts- 162 6 — another 
Welshman)  and  Phineas  Fletcher  (1582-1650  or  so) 
reduced  this  great  order  of  the  universe  to  harmony 
with  man,  its  microcosm,  in  elaborate  poems  by  quaint 
methods.  Davies  in  his  Orchestra  set  it  all  dancing, 
treading  a  measure  much  like  his  mistress  Queen 
Elizabeth,  "high  and  disposedly. "  For  a  taste: 

For  loe  the  Sea  that  fleets  about  the  Land, 
And  like  a  girdle  clips  her  solide  waist, 

Musicke  and  measure  both  doth  understand; 
For  his  great  chrystall  eye  is  alwayes  cast 


156  Studies  in  Literature 

Up  to  the  Moone,  and  on  her  fixed  fast; 
And  as  she  daunceth  in  her  pallid  spheere, 
So  daunceth  he  about  his  Center  heere. 


To  Phineas  Fletcher  and  to  his  Purple  Island  (entranc- 
ing name)  I  hied  as  a  boy  after  buried  treasure,  only  to 
discover  it  a  weary  allegory  of  the  human  body  and  its 
functions.  (His  brother,  Giles  Fletcher,  who  died 
young,  was  an  imitator  of  Spenser  and  does  not  come 
into  this  purview.) 

Henry  King,  Bishop  of  Chichester  (1592-1669), 
though  little  of  a  mystic,  may  come  in  as  a  friend  of 
Donne's,  one  of  his  legal  executors  and  withal  a  poet; 
of  extraordinary  charm,  too,  within  the  short  range 
which  he  knew  how  to  keep,  so  that  you  cannot  make 
his  acquaintance  but  you  remember  it  with  pleasure. 
He  is  best  known,  I  suppose,  by  his  lyric  "Tell  me  no 
more  how  fair  she  is."  But  let  me  quote  you  a  few 
lines  from  his  lovely  Exequy  on  his  Wife: 

Meantime  thou  hast  her,  earth:  much  good 

May  my  harm  do  thee!     Since  it  stood 

With  Heaven's  will  I  might  not  call 

Her  longer  mine,  I  give  thee  all 

My  short-lived  right  and  interest 

In  her  whom  living  I  loved  best. 

Be  kind  to  her,  and  prithee  look 

Thou  write  into  thy  Doomsday  book 

Each  parcel  of  this  rarity 

Which  in  thy  casket  shrined  doth  lie, 

As  thou  wilt  answer  Him  that  lent — 

Not  gave — thee  my  dear  monument. 

So  close  the  ground,  and  'bout  her  shade 

Black  curtains  draw:  my  bride  is  laid. 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets          157 

Sleep  on,  my  Love,  in  thy  cold  bed 

Never  to  be  disquieted! 

My  last  good-night !    Thou  wilt  not  wake 

Till  I  thy  fate  shall  overtake: 

Till  age,  or  grief,  or  sickness  must 

Marry  my  body  to  that  dust 

It  so  much  loves;  and  fill  the  room 

My  heart  keeps  empty  in  thy  tomb. 

Stay  for  me  there  .  .  . 

Each  minute  is  a  short  degree 

And  every  hour  a  step  towards  thee.  .  .  . 

'Tis  true — with  shame  and  grief  I  yield — 

Thou,  like  the  van,  first  took'st  the  field; 

And  gotten  hast  the  victory 

In  thus  adventuring  to  die 

Before  me,  whose  more  years  might  crave 

A  just  precedence  in  the  grave. 

But  hark !  my  pulse,  like  a  soft  drum, 

Beats  my  approach,  tells  thee  I  come; 

And  slow  howe'er  my  marches  be 

I  shall  at  last  sit  down  by  thee. 

The  thought  of  this  bids  me  go  on 

And  wait  my  dissolution 

With  hope  and  comfort.     Dear!  forgive 

The  crime — I  am  content  to  live 

Divided  with  but  half  a  heart 

Till  we  shall  meet  and  never  part. 

Nor  is  William  Habington  (1605-1654)  quite  a 
mystic.  Though  a  Roman  Catholic  he  might  be  ranked 
alongside  Herbert,  did  he  own  even  a  measure  of  Her- 
bert's capacity  for  rapture,  for  fine  excess.  His  much 
admired  Nox  Nocti  Indicat  Scientiam 

When  I  survey  the  bright 
Celestial  sphere  .  .  . 


158  Studies  in  Literature 

says  little  more  than  Addison's  hymn,  "The  spacious 
firmament  on  high,"  says  later  on:  and  that,  to  tell 
truth,  does  not  amount  to  much.  Its  opening 

When  I  survey  the  bright 

Celestial  sphere; 

So  rich  with  jewels  hung,  that  Night 
Doth  like  an  Ethiop  bride  appear  .  .  . 

is  good:  or  might  be,  did  it  not  challenge  the  deadly 
comparison  with  Shakespeare's 

0,  she  doth  teach  the  torches  to  burn  bright! 
It  seems  she  hangs  upon  the  cheek  of  night 
Like  a  rich  jewel  in  an  Ethiope's  ear. 

Its  close  is  better: 

For  as  yourselves  your  empires  fall, 
And  every  kingdom  hath  a  grave. 

Thus  those  celestial  fires, 

Though  seeming  mute, 
The  fallacy  of  our  desires 

And  all  the  pride  of  life  confute: — 

For  they  have  watch'd  since  first 

The  World  had  birth: 
And  found  sin  in  itself  accurst 
And  nothing  permanent  on  Earth. 

Quite  good  commonplace:  but  commonplace,  never- 
theless. 

As  for  Christopher  Harvey  ( 1 597-1 663) ,  friend  of  Wal- 
ton— a  Cheshire  man  who  became  rector  of  Whitney 
in  Herefordshire  (again  we  are  on  the  Welsh  Marches) 
— he  was  a  mystic  of  the  epigrammatic  kind.  He 
imitated  Herbert  and,  what  is  more,  didn't  care  who 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets  159 

knew  it.  The  title  of  his  best  known  volume  runs 
thus — The  Synagogue:  or  The  Shadow  of  the  Temple. 
Sacred  Poems  and  Private  Ejaculations  in  Imitation  of 
Mr.  George  Herbert.  Printed  for  Philemon  Stephens  at 
the  Guilded  Lyon  in  St.  Paul's  Churchyard.  The  poem 
I  like  best  in  it  is  nothing  mystical.  It  opens  magni- 
ficently, thus 

The  Bishop?  Yes,  why  not?  ... 

but  cannot,  of  course,  maintain  that  level.  Two  stan- 
zas, however,  may  be  worth  quoting  in  these  days: 

The  Bishop?    Yes,  why  not?     What  doth  that  name 

Import  which  is  unlawful  or  unfit? 
To  say  The  Overseer  is  the  same 

In  substance,  and  no  hurt  (I  hope)  in  it: 
But  sure  if  men  did  not  despise  the  thing, 
Such  scorn  upon  the  name  they  would  not  fling. 

Some  priests — some  presbyters  I  mean — would  be 

Each  Overseer  of  his  sev'ral  cure; 
But  one  Superiour,  to  oversee 

Them  altogether,  they  will  not  endure. 

This  the  main  difference  is,  that  I  can  see, — 
Bishops  they  would  not  have,  but  they  would  be. 

IV 

Before  speaking  of  a  more  important  and  more 
mystical  mystic,  Francis  Quarles  (1592-1644),  I  must 
say  just  a  word  upon  a  tenet  of  the  mystical  faith  which 
naturally  flows  from  the  two  principles  we  have  dis- 
cussed at  some  length.  If  the  universe  be  an  ordered 
harmony,  and  the  soul  of  man  a  tiny  lesser  harmony, 
vibrating  to  it,  yearning  to  it,  seeking  to  be  one  with  it : 
if,  again,  of  recollection  it  knows  itself  to  have  been  at 


160  Studies  in  Literature 

some  time  one  with  it,  though  now  astray  upon  earth,  a 
lost  province  (as  I  put  it,  a  fortnight  ago)  of  the  King- 
dom of  God;  why,  then,  it  follows  that  the  King  himself 
passionately  seeks  to  recover,  to  retrieve,  that  which 
was  lost.  The  idea  of  a  Christ  bruising  his  feet  end- 
lessly over  stony  places,  insatiate  in  search  of  lost  Man, 
his  brother,  or  the  lost  Soul,  his  desired  bride,  haunts 
all  our  mystical  poetry  from  that  lovely  fifteenth  cen- 
tury poem  Quia  Amore  Langueo,  down  to  Francis 
Thompson's  Hound  of  Heaven.  In  a  former  lecture  I 
read  Quia  Amore  Langueo  to  you  almost  in  extenso. 
Suffer  me  today  to  recall  but  two  verses  of  the  wounded 
Christ  chanting  his  bride : 

I  crowned  her  with  bliss  and  she  me  with  thorn; 

I  led  her  to  chamber  and  she  me  to  die; 
I  brought  her  to  worship  and  she  me  to  scorn; 
I  did  her  reverence  and  she  me  villany. 
To  love  that  loveth  is  no  maistry; 
Her  hate  made  never  my  love  her  foe: 
Ask  me  then  no  question  why — 
Quia  amore  langueo. 


My  love  is  in  her  chamber:  hold  your  peace! 

Make  ye  no  noise,  but  let  her  sleep. 
My  babe  I  would  not  were  in  dis-ease, 
I  may  not  hear  my  dear  child  weep. 
With  my  pap  I  shall  her  keep; 
Ne  marvel  ye  not  that  I  tend  her  to: 
The  wound  in  my  side  were  ne'er  so  deep 
But  Quia  amore  langueo. 

That  cry  still  haunts  out  of  a  small  innominate  poem 
of  the  century  with  which  we  are  dealing: 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets  161 

My  blood  so  red 

For  thee  was  shed, 
Come  home  again,  come  home  again; 
My  own  sweet  heart,  come  home  again! 
You've  gone  astray 
Out  of  your  way, 
Come  home  again,  come  home  again! 

It  haunts  Quarles ;  but  with  Quarles  it  is  rather  the  cry 
of  the  soul,  the  Bride,  seeking  the  Bridegroom : 

I  will  rise  now,  and  go  about  the  city  in  the  streets,  and  in 
the  broad  ways  I  will  seek  him  whom  my  soul  loveth:  I 
sought  him,  but  I  found  him  not. 

The  watchmen  that  go  about  the  city  found  me :  to  whom 
I  said,  Saw  ye  him  whom  my  soul  loveth? 

It  was  but  a  little  that  I  passed  from  them,  but  I  found 
him  whom  my  soul  loveth.  I  held  him  and  would  not  let 
him  go,  until  I  had  brought  him  into  my  mother's  house, 
and  into  the  chamber  of  her  that  conceived  me. 

I  charge  you,  O  ye  daughters  of  Jerusalem,  by  the  roes 
and  by  the  hinds  of  the  field,  that  ye  stir  not  up,  nor  awake 
my  love,  till  he  please. 

"So  I  my  best-Beloved's  am :  so  he  is  mine."  That  is  a 
refrain  of  Quarles,  and  his  constant  note.  But  in  the 
one  poem  I  shall  quote  from  him  I  am  redeeming,  in 
some  fashion — or  trying  to  redeem — a  wrong.  By  an 
error  into  which  no  less  a  man  than  the  late  W.  E. 
Henley  fell  along  with  me,  an  old  book  misled  us  into 
giving  the  lines  to  so  unlikely  a  man  as  Rochester. 
And  there  they  are,  in  the  Oxford  Book  of  English  Verse 
ascribed  to  Rochester,  and  the  ascription  must  be 
corrected  though  I  find  it  will  involve  destroying  about 
sixty  pages  of  stereotyped  plates.  But  they  are 
Quarles's.  They  run : 


162  Studies  in  Literature 

Why  dost  thou  shade  thy  lovely  face?    O  why 
Does  that  eclipsing  hand  of  thine  deny 
The  sunshine  of  the  Sun's  enlivening  eye? 

Without  thy  light  what  light  remains  in  me? 
Thou  art  my  life:  my  way,  my  light's  in  thee; 
I  live,  I  move,  and  by  thy  beams  I  see. 

Thou  art  my  life — If  thou  but  turn  away, 

My  life's  a  thousand  deaths.     Thou  art  my  way, — 

Without  thee,  Love,  I  travel  not  but  stray. 

My  light  thou  art:  without  thy  glorious  sight 
My  eyes  are  darken'd  with  eternal  night. 
My  Love,  thou  art  my  way,  my  life,  my  light. 

Thou  art  my  way;  I  wander  if  thou  fly. 
Thou  art  my  light;  if  hid,  how  blind  am  I! 
Thou  art  my  life;  if  thou  withdraw'st,  I  die. 

My  eyes  are  dark  and  blind;  I  cannot  see: 
To  whom  or  whither  should  my  darkness  flee, 
But  to  that  light?— and  what's  that  light  but  thee? 

If  I  have  lost  my  path,  dear  lover,  say, 
Shall  I  still  wander  in  a  doubtful  way? 
Love,  shall  a  lamb  of  Israel's  sheepfold  stray? 


And  yet  thou  turn'st  away  thy  face  and  fly'st  me! 
And  yet  I  sue  for  grace  and  thou  deny'st  me! 
Speak,  art  thou  angry,  Love,  or  only  try'st  me? 


Dissolve  thy  sunbeams,  close  thy  wings  and  stay! 
See,  see  how  I  am  blind,  and  dead,  and  stray! 
— 0  thou  that  art  my  life,  my  light,  my  way ! 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets  163 

Then  work  thy  will !     If  passion  bid  me  flee, 
My  reason  shall  obey;  my  wings  shall  be 
Stretch'd  out  no  farther  than  from  me  to  thee! 


Mention  of  wings  reminds  me  to  say  a  word — it  shall 
be  no  more — on  the  quaint  metrical  and  typographical 
devices  in  which  these  poets  revelled ;  artificialities  in  far 
worse  taste  than  mere  puns  and  verbal  conceits ;  very  far 
worse  than  the  rebuses  and  elaborate  emblems  around 
which  Quarles,  for  example,  as  a  symbolist,  wrote  so 
many  of  his  poems.  It  was  the  day  of  such  affecta- 
tions; of  ring-posies,  acrostics,  and  the  topiary  art  that 
designed  mazes,  trimmed  yew  trees  and  tortured  them 
to  the  shapes  of  lions,  camels,  huntsmen  with  hounds. 
Its  worst  excess  is  seen,  possibly,  in  the  tricks  (dear  to 
Herbert,  Harvey,  and  others)  of  writing  verses  to  the 
shape  of  altars,  pyramids,  the  wings  of  a  bird.  And  my 
word  upon  these  I  shall  borrow  from  Bacon's  Essay  Of 
Gardens: 

As  for  the  Making  of  Knots,  or  Figures,  with  Divers 
Coloured  Earths,  that  they  may  lie  under  the  Windowes 
of  the  House,  on  that  Side,  which  the  Garden  stands,  they 
be  but  Toyes:  You  may  see  as  good  Sights,  many  times, 
in  Tarts. 

VI 

Our  last  poet,  Richard  Crashaw  (1613?-!  649)  ran  to 
excesses  of  verbal  conceit  which  anybody  can  arraign, 
albeit  Johnson  rather  unaccountably  overlooked  their 
help,  which  had  been  priceless,  for  his  indictment  of  the 
metaphysical  poets.  Everyone  knows  the  flagrancies 
of  The  Weeper  with  the  Magdalen's  tearful  eyes: 


164  Studies  in  Literature 

Two  walking  baths,  two  weeping  motions, 
Portable  and  compendious  Oceans, 

and  the  "brisk  Cherub"  supposed  to  sip  from  them 
each  morning, 

and  his  song 
Tastes  of  this  breakfast  all  day  long. 

Yes,  the  flagrancies  are  flagrant :  yet  I  think  too  much 
has  been  made  of  them.  For  (as  I  hold  the  business  of 
an  examiner  is  always  to  discover  how  much  a  student 
does  know  and  never  how  much  he  does  not),  even  so 
I  hold  that  we  may  overlook  a  hundred  flagrancies  for 
such  a  stanza  as  this : 

The  dew  no  more  will  weep 
The  primrose's  pale  cheek  to  deck, 

The  dew  no  more  will  sleep 
Nuzzled  in  the  lily's  neck : 

Much  rather  would  it  tremble  here 
And  leave  them  both  to  be  thy  tear. 

Crashaw,  one  must  admit,  is  often  terribly  at  his  ease 
in  Sion:  and  if  one  must  contrast  him  with  Herbert — 
often  so  gently  familiar,  too,  with  his  God — why,  the 
difference  is  that  Herbert  had,  with  modesty,  a  breeding 
that  made  him  at  home  in  any  company.  But  how 
Crashaw's  tenderness  excuses  all  familiarity  in  his  fare- 
well to  Saint  Teresa,  going  to  martyrdom ! 

Farewell  then,  all  the  world,  adieu ! 
Teresa  is  no  more  for  you.  .  .  . 
Farewell  whatever  dear  may  be, 
Mother's  arms  or  father's  knee ! 
Farewell  house,  and  farewell  home! 
She's  for  the  Moors  and  Martyrdom. 
Sweet,  not  so  fast.  .  .  . 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets  165 

For  a  last  and  longer  taste  of  Crashaw  let  me  read  a 
few  verses  of  the  Hymn  of  the  Shepherdmen  sung  over  the 
infant  Christ  in  his  snow-bound  cradle : 

Tityrus  (they  are  called  Tityrus  and  Thyrsis) 

I  saw  the  curl'd  drops,  soft  and  slow, 

Come  hovering  o'er  the  place's  head; 
Off 'ring  their  whitest  sheets  of  snow 
To  furnish  the  fair  infant's  bed. 

"Forbear, "  said  I;  "be  not  too  bold, 
Your  fleece  is  white,  but  'tis  too  cold." 

Thyrsis.     I  saw  the  obsequious  seraphim 

Their  rosy  fleece  of  fire  bestow: 
For  well  they  now  can  spare  their  wings 
Since  Heaven  itself  lies  here  below. 

"Well  done,"  said  I;  "but  are  you  sure 
Your  down,  so  warm,  will  pass  for  pure?" 

Both.     No  no;  your  King's  not  yet  to  seek 

Where  to  repose  his  royal  head: 
See,  see,  how  soon  his  new-bloom'd  cheek 
'Twixt  mother's  breasts  is  gone  to  bed. 
"Sweet  choice,"  said  we;  "no  way  but  so 
Not  to  ly  cold  yet  sleep  in  snow." 

Chorus.    She  sings  thy  tears  asleep,  and  dips 

Her  kisses  in  thy  weeping  eye; 
She  spreads  the  red  leaves  of  thy  lips 
That  in  their  buds  yet  blushing  lie. 

She  'gainst  those  mother  diamonds  tries 
The  points  of  her  young  eagle's  eyes. 


To  thee,  meek  Majesty,  soft  King 
Of  simple  graces  and  sweet  loves! 

Each  of  us  his  lamb  will  bring, 
Each  his  pair  of  silver  doves ! 


166  Studies  in  Literature 

At  last,  in  fire  of  thy  fair  eyes, 
Ourselves  become  our  own  best  sacrifice. 

VII 

In  conclusion, — you  certainly  will  not  charge  me, 
Gentlemen,  with  having  in  these  lectures  withheld  any 
due  I  could  bring  of  admiration  for  our  seventeenth 
century  mystical  poets.  Yet — for  a  personal  confession 
— I  desire  not  to  live  very  long  at  one  stretch  with  them. 
You  may  put  it,  if  you  will,  that  he  is  blameworthy 
who  finds  them 

too  bright  or  good 
For  human  nature's  daily  food. 

But  I  find  their  atmosphere  too  rare,  and  at  the  same 
time  too  nebulous,  their  manna  too  ambrosial,  unsatis- 
fying to  my  hunger.  I  turn  from  vapours,  seeking 
back  to  the  firm  Greek  outline,  to  the  art  which  in 
Aristotle's  phrase,  exhibits  men  and  women  in  action — 
TtpdrTOYTes — above  all  to  the  breathing,  familiar,  ador- 
able bodies  of  my  kind.  I  want  Daphnis  at  the  spring, 
Rebecca  at  the  well,  Ruth  stretched  at  Boaz's  feet, 
silent  in  the  sleeping  granary. 

You  promise  heavens  free  from  strife, 

Pure  truth  and  perfect  change  of  will; 
But  sweet,  sweet,  is  this  human  life 
So  sweet,  I  fain  would  breathe  it  still; 
Your  chilly  stars  I  can  forgo; 
This  warm  kind  world  is  all  I  know. 

Forsooth  the  present  we  must  give 

To  that  which  cannot  pass  away; 
All  beauteous  things  for  which  we  live 

By  laws  of  time  and  space  decay — 


Seventeenth  Century  Poets          167 

But  O  the  very  reason  why 

I  clasp  them,  is  because  they  die! 

So  even  coming  from  the  presence  of  Dante,  with  an 
old  schoolmaster  of  mine  I  whisper,  "Ariosto,  wait  for 
me. ' '  So  from  symposia  of  these  mystics,  rapturous  but 
jejune,  as  from  the  vegetarian  feast  of  Eugenists  and  of 
other  men  made  perfect,  I  return  to  knock  in  at  the  old 
tavern  with  the  cosy  red  blinds,  where  I  may  meet  Don 
Quixote,  Sancho  Panza,  Douglas  and  Percy,  Mr.  Pick- 
wick and  Sam  Weller,  Romeo  and  the  Three  Musketeers 
— above  all,  Falstaff,  with  Mistress  Quickly  to  serve 
me.  I  want  the  personal — Shakespeare,  Johnson, 
Goldsmith,  Lamb,  among  men:  of  women  I  need  to 
worship  no  Saint  Teresa,  but  Miranda  the  maid, 
Imogen  the  wife.  For 

There  vitality,  there,  there  solely  in  song 

Resides,  where  earth  and  her  uses  to  men,  their  needs 
Their  forceful  cravings  the  theme  are:  there  it  is  strong. 

That  is  the  gospel  of  Meredith,  and  I  subscribe  to  it. 
For  we  come  out  of  earth  and  fall  back  to  earth;  and 
the  spring  of  our  craving  soars — though  it  reach  to 
God — on  the  homely  jet  of  our  geniture. 


THE  POETRY  OF 
GEORGE  MEREDITH 


I  HAVE  chosen,  Gentlemen,  to  speak  of  George  Mere- 
dith's poetry,  this  morning,  for  two  or  three  reasons ; 
of  which — to  be  honest — the  foremost  is  that  I  delight 
in  it.  But,  for  a  second,  I  think  it  time  to  hint  at 
least  that  the  Modern  and  Medieval  Languages  Board 
intend  to  justify  by  practice  what  they  meant  when, 
in  framing  the  separate  English  Tripos,  they  so  far 
ignored  academic  tradition  and  dared  the  rage  of 
schoolmasters — which,  like  that  of  the  sheep,  is  terrible 
— as  to  open  the  study  of  English  down  to  our  own 
times,  declining  to  allow  that  any  past  date  could  be 
settled,  even  by  university  statute,  as  the  one  upon 
which  English  literature  took  to  its  bed,  and  expired, 
and  was  beatified.  I  have  possibly  as  much  reason  as 
anyone  in  this  room  to  know  how  faulty  one's  judgment 
may  be  about  modern  work,  and  specially  about  modern 
poetry.  Still  the  task  of  appraising  it  has  to  be  done, 
for  the  books  of  our  time  are  the  books  of  our  time. 
They  tell  us  in  their  various  ways  "How  it  strikes  a 
Contemporary":  and  we  shall  not  intelligently  prepare 
ourselves,  here  at  Cambridge,  by  drawing  an  imaginary 
line  somewhere  between  the  past  and  the  present  and 

168 


The  Poetry  of  George  Meredith      169 

announcing,  "On  this  side  are  the  certified  dead,  who 
are  alive;  on  that,  the  living,  who  are  non-existent." 
Hazlitt's  remark,  "I  hate  to  read  new  books, "  or  some- 
body else's  that,  whenever  a  new  book  came  out,  he 
read  an  old  one,  is — well,  just  the  sort  of  thing  one  does 
say  at  the  beginning  of  a  familiar  essay  or  at  the  dinner- 
table;  and  to  press  it  to  absurdity  were  an  easy  waste  of 
time.  "Ah,  sir, "  said  the  lady,  "this  is  a  sad,  degener- 
ate age!"  "Ah,  madam,"  answered  the  philosopher, 
"let  us  thank  heaven  that  neither  you  nor  I  belong  to 
it." 

And,  after  all,  what  does  it  matter  to  this  large  world 
in  the  long  run  if  a  tripos  candidate  should  pronounce 
a  mistaken  judgment  on  the  merits  of  Lascelles  Aber- 
crombie,  John  Masefield  or  John  Drinkwater? 

Moreover  I  have  insisted,  and  shall  go  on  insisting 
while  I  speak  from  this  place,  that  upon  a  school  of 
English  here  rests  an  obligation  to  teach  the  writing  of 
good  English  as  well  as  the  reading  of  it :  to  teach  the 
writing  of  it  through  the  reading.  I  want  the  average 
educated  Englishman  to  write  English  as  deftly,  as 
scrupulously,  as  the  average  educated  Frenchman 
writes  French;  to  have,  as  at  present  he  has  not,  at 
least  an  equal  respect  for  his  language.  Nay,  our 
language  being  one  of  the  glories  of  our  birth  and  state, 
I  want  him  to  draw  self-respect  from  his  use  of  it,  as 
men  of  good  ancestry  are  careful  not  to  derogate  from 
their  forefathers.  I  would  have  him  sensible  that  a 
sloppy  sentence  is  no  more  nearly  "good  enough"  than 
dirty  linen  is  good  enough.  I  want,  indeed,  Prose  "in 
widest  commonalty  spread."  I  desire — to  put  it  on 
merely  practical  grounds,  using  a  fairly  recent  example 
— that  among  us  we  make  it  impossible  to  do  again 
what  our  Admiralty  did  with  the  battle  of  Jutland,  to 


170  Studies  in  Literature 

win  a  victory  at  sea  and  lose  it  in  a  despatch.  And  I 
use  this  illustration  because  many  who  will  hardly  be 
convinced  that  a  thing  is  worth  doing  well  for  its  own 
sake,  may  yet  listen  when  you  show  them  that  to  do  it 
ill,  indifferently,  laxly,  means  public  damage.  There 
used  to  be  a  saying  in  the  Fleet — and  it  should  have 
reached  the  Admiralty — that  "Nigh-enough  is  the 
worst  man  in  the  ship." 

Now  although  our  fathers — it  must  be  confessed — 
tried  harder  than  we  to  write  prose;  although  to  our 
age  belongs  that  rampant  substitute  which  I  once  de- 
nounced to  you  under  the  name  of  Jargon ;  nevertheless 
it  were,  as  I  hold,  a  folly  to  hedge  off  good  writing  of 
our  day  and  bid  you  fasten  your  study  upon  remote 
masterpieces.  Admire  them,  study  them,  by  them  im- 
prove your  own  style.  But  improve  it  also  by  studying 
how  good  writers  today  are  adapting  it  to  express  what 
men  and  women  think  and  do  in  our  time.  For  we 
belong  to  it.  We  cannot,  as  Charles  Lamb  once 
threatened  in  a  pet,  say  ' '  Damn  the  age !  I  will  write 
for  antiquity":  and  as  little  ought  we  to  surrender 
to  the  baser  fashions  of  the  present.  But  we  should, 
I  contend,  face  the  arena  and  make  what  best  use  we 
may  of  that  present  use, 

Quern  penes  arbitrium  est,  et  jus  et  norma  loquendi. 
II 

You  are  thinking  perhaps  that  all  this  lies  wide  of  any 
talk  about  George  Meredith  who,  to  begin  with,  is  dead, 
and  while  alive  was  a  doubtful  exemplar  of  pellucid 
English. 

Now,  for  the  first  point,  you  must  forgive  me  that  I, 
who  had  the  honour  to  know  him  enough  to  hear  him 


The  Poetry  of  George  Meredith      171 

talk  frankly,  can  scarcely  think  of  him  as  dead,  and 
certainly  can  never  think  of  him  as  old. 

"I  suppose,"  he  admitted  once,  "I  should  regard  myself 
as  getting  old — I  am  seventy-four.  But  I  do  not  feel  to  be 
growing  old,  either  in  heart  or  mind.  I  still  look  on  life 
with  a  young  man's  eye.  I  have  always  hoped  I  should 
not  grow  old  as  some  do — with  a  palsied  intellect,  living 
backwards,  regarding  other  people  as  anachronisms  because 
they  themselves  have  lived  on  into  other  times  and  left 
their  sympathies  behind  them  with  the  years." 

He  never  did.  You  must  understand  that  while  in 
conversation  and  bearing  he  played  with  innocent  ex- 
travagancies which,  in  a  smaller  man,  might  be  mis- 
taken for  affectations — in  particular  with  a  high  Spanish 
courtesy  which  was  equally  at  the  service  of  his  cook 
and  of  his  king — you  soon  perceived  all  this  to  be 
genuine;  the  natural  manner  of  the  man.  It  did  not 
pretend  a  false  sprightliness  of 

Days,  when  the  ball  of  our  vision 

Had  eagles  that  flew  unabash'd  to  sun; 

When  the  grasp  on  the  bow  was  decision, 
And  arrow  and  hand  and  eye  were  one. 

But  he  recognised  that  this  had  been,  and  was  irrecover- 
able; that  while  the  time  lasted  it  had  been  priceless. 
No  poet,  no  thinker,  growing  old,  had  ever  a  more 
fearless  trust  in  youth ;  none  has  ever  had  a  truer  sense 
of  our  duty  to  it : 

Keep  the  young  generations  in  hail, 
And  bequeath  them  no  tumbled  house. 

None  has  ever  been  more  scornful  of  the  asserted 
wisdom  of  our  seniors,  who, 


172  Studies  in  Literature 

on  their  last  plank, 
Pass  mumbling  it  as  nature's  final  page  .  .  . 

and  would  petrify  the  young  with  rules  of  wisdom,  lest 
— as  he  says  scornfully — 

Lest  dreaded  Change,  long  damm'd  by  dull  decay, 
Should  bring  the  world  a  vessel  steer'd  by  brain, 
And  ancients  musical  at  close  of  day. 

"Earth  loves  her  young,"  begins  his  next  sonnet: 

Her  gabbling  grey  she  eyes  askant,  nor  treads 

The  ways  they  walk;  by  what  they  speak  oppress'd. 

Ill 

I  have  a  more  difficult  defence  to  put  up  against  his 
alleged  and,  in  places,  undeniable  obscurity.  Rather, 
it  would  be  more  difficult  if  I  proposed  to  put  up  any. 
But  I  do  not. 

Let  us  separate  obscurity  from  ugliness.  Let  us  take, 
for  example,  Shakespeare's  King  Lear,  which  contains 
somewhat  of  both;  and  I  put  it  to  you  that  our  sense 
of  tremendous  beauty  as  we  read  that  play  is  twin  with 
a  sense  of  the  bestial  lurking  in  humankind.  Or  I  ask 
you  to  consider  Shakespeare's  Pericles  and  say,  "Is  it  or 
is  it  not  the  test  of  the  brothel  scenes  that  passes  Marina 
for  adorable?" — to  consider  The  Tempest  and  answer, 
"Where  would  be  Ariel  or  where  even  Miranda,  or 
where  the  whole  lovely  magic,  with  Caliban  left  out?" 
But  obscurity  is  failure.  It  may  be  a  partial  failure;  it 
may  be  an  entirely  honourable  failure,  born  of  bravery 
to  face  truths  for  which,  because  they  are  difficult  or 
rugged,  the  writer  can  hardly  find  expressive  words,  and 
smooth  mellifluous  words  yet  more  hardly.  Still  it  is  a 


The  Poetry  of  George  Meredith      173 

disability,  albeit  (let  me  add)  with  this  compensation, 
that  when  the  fuliginous  clouds  are  rifted,  when,  as 
often  with  Donne,  with  Browning,  with  Meredith,  we 
stand  and  gaze  into  a  sudden  vista  of  clear  beauty,  the 
surprise  is  strangely  effective :  it  has  an  awe  of  its  own 
and  a  reward  not  illegitimate.  I  might  quote  you  from 
Meredith  separate  lines  or  very  short  passages  by  the 
score  to  illustrate  this.  Take  one  example  only,  sum- 
marising that  love  of  Earth  which,  as  we  shall  find, 
is  the  master  secret  he  teaches : 

Until  at  last  this  love  of  Earth  reveals 
A  soul  beside  our  own,  to  quicken,  quell, 
Irradiate,  and  through  ruinous  floods  uplift. 

' '  Irradiate,  and  through  ruinous  floods  uplift. ' '  Milton 
taught  that  line:  but  for  Milton  it  had  never  been 
written :  and  yet  it  could  never  have  been  written,  after 
Milton,  by  any  but  an  authentic  poet. 

IV 

Fortunately,  however,  Meredith  has  left  some  poems, 
unchallengeably  beautiful,  in  which  a  reader  impatient 
of  obscurity  will  discover  little  or  nothing  to  tease  him. 
And  since — and  although  my  practice  this  morning  may 
seem  to  contradict  it — no  small  part  of  a  teacher's 
duty  consists  in  saving  other  people's  time,  let  me 
indicate  a  few  of  Meredith's  poems  which,  if  you  like 
them,  will  lead  you  to  persevere  with  more  difficult 
ones  in  which,  if  my  experience  be  of  use,  you  will  find 
much  delight :  for  there  is  a  pleasure  in  critical  pains  as 
well  as  in  poetic.  If  you  like  them  not,  why  then  you 
will  be  in  a  position  to  decide  on  saving  further  time, 
though  you  lose  something  else. 


174  Studies  in  Literature 

The  first — Phoebus  with  Admetus — I  will  read  in  full. 
You  know  the  legend:  how  Phoebus  Apollo — lord  of 
the  sun,  of  music,  of  archery,  of  medicine — was  exiled 
by  his  father  Zeus  for  having  slain  the  Cyclops,  and 
condemned  to  serve  a  term  on  earth,  tending  the  flocks 
of  king  Admetus  of  Thessaly.  This  is  the  tale  of  the 
shepherds  and  herdsmen  who  had  known  the  divine 
guest  and  the  wondrous  great  season  of  plenty  he 
brought:1 

When  by  Zeus  relenting  the  mandate  was  revoked, 

Sentencing  to  exile  the  bright  Sun-God, 
Mindful  were  the  ploughmen  of  who  the  steer  had  yoked, 

Who:  and  what  a  track  show'd  the  upturn'd  sod! 
Mindful  were  the  shepherds  as  now  the  noon  severe 

Beat  a  burning  eyebrow  to  brown  evetide, 
How  the  rustic  flute  drew  the  silver  to  the  sphere, 
Sister  of  his  own,  till  her  rays  fell  wide. 
God !  of  whom  music 
And  song  and  blood  are  pure, 
The  day  is  never  darken 'd 
That  had  thee  here  obscure. 

Chirping  none  the  scarlet  cicalas  crouch'd  in  ranks: 

Slack  the  thistle-head  piled  its  down-silk  grey : 
Scarce  the  stony  lizard  suck'd  hollows  in  his  flanks; 

Thick  on  spots  of  umbrage  our  drowsed  flocks  lay. 
Sudden  bow'd  the  chestnuts  beneath  a  wind  unheard, 

Lengthen'd  ran  the  grasses,  the  sky  grew  slate: 
Then  amid  a  swift  flight  of  wing'd  seed  white  as  curd, 

Clear  of  limb  a  Youth  smote  the  master's  gate. 

Water,  first  of  singers,  o'er  rocky  mount  and  mead, 
First  of  earthly  singers,  the  sun-loved  rill, 

1  Mark  the  triple  hammer-beat,  closing  the  2nd,  4th,  6th,  8th  stan- 
zaic  lines  throughout.  It  is  one  of  Meredith's  master-tricks. 


The  Poetry  of  George  Meredith      175 

Sang  of  him,  and  flooded  the  ripples  on  the  reed, 
Seeking  whom  to  waken,  and  what  ear  fill. 

Water,  sweetest  soother  to  kiss  a  wound  and  cool, 
Sweetest  and  divinest,  the  sky-born  brook, 

Chuckled,  with  a  whimper,  and  made  a  mirror-pool 
Round  the  guest  we  welcomed,  the  strange  hand  shook. 

Many  swarms  of  wild  bees  descended  on  our  fields: 

Stately  stood  the  wheatstalk  with  head  bent  high : 
Big  of  heart  we  labour'd  at  storing  mighty  yields, 

Wool  and  corn,  and  clusters  to  make  men  cry ! 
Hand-like  rushed  the  vintage;  we  strung  the  bellied  skins, 

Plump,  and  at  the  sealing  the  Youth's  voice  rose: 
Maidens  clung  in  circle,  on  little  fists  their  chins; 

Gentle  beasties  through  pushed  a  cold  long  nose. 

Foot  to  fire  in  snowtime  we  trimm'd  the  slender  shaft : 

Often  down  the  pit  spied  the  lean  wolf's  teeth 
Grin  against  his  will,  trapp'd  by  masterstrokes  of  craft; 

Helpless  in  his  froth-wrath  as  green  logs  seethe ! 
Safe  the  tender  lambs  tugg'd  the  teats,  and  winter  sped 

Whirl'd  before  the  crocus,  the  year's  new  gold. 
Hung  the  hooky  beak  up  aloft  the  arrowhead 

Redden'd  through  his  feathers  for  our  dear  fold. 

Tales  we  drank  of  giants  at  war  with  Gods  above : 

Rocks  were  they  to  look  on,  and  earth  climb 'd  air! 
Tales  of  search  for  simples,  and  those  who  sought  of  love 

Ease  because  the  creature  was  all  too  fair. 
Pleasant  ran  our  thinking  that  while  our  work  was  good, 

Sure  as  fruits  for  sweat  would  the  praise  come  fast. 
He  that  wrestled  stoutest  and  tamed  the  billow-brood 

Danced  in  rings  with  girls,  like  a  sail-flapp'd  mast. 

Now  of  medicine  and  song,  of  both  of  which  Apollo 
is   God.     Song — good   poetry   is   always   linked   with 


176  Studies  in  Literature 

medicine   in   Meredith's   mind:   twin   restoratives   of 

human  sanity: 

Lo,  the  herb  of  healing,  when  once  the  herb  is  known, 

Shines  in  shady  woods  bright  as  new-sprung  flame. 
Ere  the  string  was  tighten'd  we  heard  the  mellow  tone, 

After  he  had  taught  how  the  sweet  sounds  came. 
Stretch'd  about  his  feet,  labour  done,  'twas  as  you  see 

Red  pomegranates  tumble  and  burst  hard  rind. 
So  began  contention  to  give  delight  and  be 

Excellent  in  things  aim'd  to  make  life  kind. 

Last,  the  invocation  to  all  beasts,  leaves,  trees,  to  join 
in  remembering  him : 

You  with  shelly  horns,  rams!  and  promontory  goats, 

You  whose  browsing  beards  dip  in  coldest  dew ! 
Bulls,  that  walk  the  pastures  in  kingly-flashing  coats ! 

Laurel,  ivy,  vine,  wreath'd  for  feasts  not  few ! 
You  that  build  the  shade-roof,  and  you  that  court  the  rays, 

You  that  leap  besprinkling  the  rock  stream-rent: 
He  has  been  our  fellow,  the  morning  of  our  days! 
Us  he  chose  for  housemates,  and  this  way  went. 
God !  of  whom  music 
And  song  and  blood  are  pure, 
The  day  is  never  darken'd 
That  had  thee  here  obscure. 


Begin  with  that,  or  begin  with  its  fellow,  the  exquisite 
gentle  tale  of  Melampus  the  good  physician  to  whom 
the  woodland  creatures  in  reward  that  he 

loving  them  all, 
Among  them  walk'd,  as  a  scholar  who  reads  a  book, 


The  Poetry  of  George  Meredith      177 

taught  their  love  of  medicine,  and  where  to  find  the 
herbs  of  healing:  and  from  Melampus  go  on  to  the 
ringing  ballad  The  Nuptials  of  Attila,  or  that  favourite 
of  mine  The  Day  of  the  Daughter  of  Hades  which  tells 
how  Persephone  (ravished  wife  of  dark  Hades,  released 
by  him  on  a  day  to  revisit  earth  and  embrace  her  mother 
Demeter)  takes  with  her  in  the  chariot  her  daughter 
Skiageneia,  child  of  Shadow;  and  how  this  girl-goddess, 
slipping  from  the  car,  confronts  a  mortal  youth,  Cal- 
listes: 

She  did  not  fly, 
Nor  started  at  his  advance:  .  .  . 


for  all  the  wonder  and  beauty  of  this  upper  earth  were 
running  through  her  blood,  quickening  love  and  mem- 
ories half  surmised  in  every  drop  from  her  mother 
inherited — "the  blood  of  her  a  lighted  dew"; 

She  did  not  fly, 
Nor  started  at  his  advance: 
She  looked,  as  when  infinite  thirst 
Pants  pausing  to  bless  the  springs, 
Refreshed,  unsated.     Then  first 
He  trembled  with  awe  of  the  things 
He  had  seen;  and  he  did  transfer, 
Divining  and  doubting  in  turn, 
His  reverence  unto  her; 
Nor  asked  what  he  crouched  to  learn: 
The  whence  of  her,  whither,  and  why 
Her  presence  there,  and  her  name, 
Her  parentage:  under  which  sky 
Her  birth,  and  how  hither  she  came, 
So  young,  a  virgin,  alone, 
Unfriended,  having  no  fear, 


178  Studies  in  Literature 

As  Oreads  have;  no  moan, 
Like  the  lost  upon  earth;  no  tear; 
Not  a  sign  of  the  torch  in  the  blood, 
Though  her  stature  had  reached  the  height 
When  mantles  a  tender  rud 
In  maids  that  of  youths  have  sight, 
If  maids  of  our  seed  they  be : 
For  he  said :  A  glad  vision  art  thou ! 
And  she  answered  him:  Thou  to  me! 
As  men  utter  a  vow. 

Classical  to  me  it  seems;  and  classically  radiant,  as  if 
painted  by  Titian,  the  Sicilian  day  that  followed  for 
these  two:  she  grandly  innocent  in  his  company, 
recognising  and  naming  the  fruits  of  earth : 

Pear,  apple,  almond,  plum  .  .  . 

And  she  touch 'd  them  with  finger  and  thumb, 

As  the  vine-hook  closes:  she  smiled, 

Recounting  again  and  again, 

Corn,  wine,  fruit,  oil!  like  a  child, 

With  the  meaning  known  to  men. 

Read  this  poem  carefully  (I  dare  to  say),  and  you  will 
read  in  this  girl-goddess  not  only  what  is  the  secret  of 
the  heroines  in  many  of  Meredith's  novels — Lucy  Des- 
borough,  Sandra  Belloni,  Clara  Middleton — but  also 
the  secret  of  Shakespeare's  later  heroines — Perdita, 
Imogen,  Miranda:  and  will  not  wonder  how  the  youth 
Callistes,  when  at  evening  her  father's  awful  chariot 
rapt  her  from  him,  was  left  with  no  future  but  to  crave 
for  her  until  his  life's  end 

And  to  join  her,  or  have  her  brought  back, 
In  his  frenzy  the  singer  would  call, 
Till  he  followed  where  never  was  track, 
On  the  path  trod  of  all. 


The  Poetry  of  George  Meredith      179 

There  are  those  who  would  counsel  you  to  begin  your 
study  of  Meredith  with  Modern  Love  rather  than  with 
the  poems  I  have  chosen:  and  here  their  counsel  may 
easily  be  wiser  than  mine,  personal  taste  interfering  to 
make  me  wayward.  As  a  poetic  form,  the  sonnet- 
sequence — even  when  turned  as  Meredith  turns  it,  from 
quatorzain  to  seizain — is  (unless  handled  by  Shake- 
speare) about  the  last  to  allure  me.  I  should  add,  how- 
ever, that  Meredith's  use  of  the  sixteen-line  stanza  in 
Modern  Love  is  exceedingly  strong  and  individual:  and 
that  in  the  past  hundred  years  few  quatorzains,  or 
sonnets  proper,  will  match  his  Lucifer  in  Starlight, 
which  I  read  to  you  last  term.  As  a  subject,  the 
relations  of  the  husband,  the  wife  and  the  other  man, 
especially  when  rehearsed  by  the  husband,  have  usually 
(I  state  it  merely  as  a  private  confession)  the  same 
physical  effect  on  me  as  a  drawing-room  recitation.  I 
want  to  get  under  a  table  and  howl.  From  the  outset 
the  recital  makes  me  shy  as  a  stranger  pounced  upon 
and  called  in  to  settle  a  delicate  domestic  difference; 
and  as  it  goes  on,  I  start  protesting  inwardly,  "My  dear 
sir — delighted  to  do  my  best  .  .  .  man  of  the  world  .  .  . 
quite  understand  .  .  .  sympathetic,  and  all  that  sort  of 
thing.  .  .  .  But  really,  if  you  insist  on  all  this  getting 
into  the  newspapers.  .  .  .  And  where  did  I  put  my 
hat,  by  the  way?"  In  short — take  the  confession — 
with  the  intricacies  and  self-scourgings  of  Modern  Love 
I  find  myself  less  at  home  than  with  the  franker  tempt- 
ations of  St.  Anthony,  and  far  less  than  with  the  larger, 
liberally  careless  amours  of  the  early  gods. 

Nevertheless,  and  by  all  means,  try  both  ways  and 
choose  which  you  will,  provided  it  coax  you  on  to  search 
the  real  heart  of  Meredith's  muse  in  The  Woods  of 
Westermain,  Earth  and  Man,  A  Faith  on  Trial,  The 


i8o  Studies  in  Literature 

Empty  Purse,  Night  of  Frost  in  May,  and  the  like.  You 
will  find  many  thorned  thickets  by  the  way;  and  some 
out  of  which,  however  hard  you  beat  them,  you  will 
start  no  bird.  The  juvenile  poems  will  but  poorly 
reward  you,  until  you  come  to  be  interested  in  them 
historically,  as  Pre-Raphaelite  essays  which  Meredith 
outgrew.  The  later  Odes  celebrating  French  history — 
The  Revolution;  Napoleon;  France,  1870;  Alsace-Lor- 
raine— should  be  deferred  (I  think)  till  you  are  fairly 
possessed  by  the  Meredithian  fervour.  They  have 
their  splendid  passages;  but  they  are  undeniably 
difficult.  Moreover  I  hold  you  must  acquire  a  thorough 
trust  in  a  bard  before  trusting  him  at  an  ode,  which  is  of 
all  forms  of  poetry  the  most  pontifical ;  before  you  com- 
pose your  spirit  to  a  proper  humility  while  he  indues 
his  robes,  strikes  attitude  and  harp,  and  starts  telling 
France  what  he  thinks  of  her,  or  anything  so  great  as 
France  what  he  thinks  of  it,  albeit  he  may  sift  our 
approval  and  end  on  a  note  of  encouragement.  After 
reading  odes  in  this  strain  I,  for  one,  always  feel  that  I 
hear  France — or  whatever  it  is — murmuring  politely 
at  the  close,  "Thank  you — so  much!" 

VI 

But  it  is  in  the  poems  I  named  just  now,  and  in  others 
collected  under  the  two  general  titles  A  Reading  of 
Earth  and  A  Reading  of  Life,  that  you  will  find  the 
essential  Meredith:  and,  as  these  titles  hint,  he  is  a 
teacher,  an  expositor.  Now  why  many  of  our  English 
poets  should  be  teachers  is  a  dark  question — to  be 
attempted  perhaps  though  probably  not  resolved,  in 
some  later  lecture:  as  why  an  expositor,  of  all  men, 
should  be  obscure  and  even  succeed  in  giving  us  en- 
lightenment by  means  of  obscurity,  is  an  even  darker 


The  Poetry  of  George  Meredith      181 

question — although  I  make  no  doubt  that  the  genius  of 
this  university,  sometime  adorned  by  the  late  and  great 
Dr.  Westcott  can  somehow  provide  it  with  an  answer. 
But  the  philosophy  of  Meredith,  when  you  come  to  it, 
cannot  be  denied  for  strong,  for  arresting,  for  athletic, 
lean,  hard,  wiry.  It  is  not  comfortable :  Stoical,  rather ; 
even  strongly  Stoical,  as  we  use  the  epithet.  But  it 
differs  by  the  whole  heaven  from  ancient  Stoicism, 
being  reared  on  two  pillars  of  Faith  and  Love.  And, 
yet  again,  the  Faith  differs  utterly  from  the  Faith 
which  supports  the  most  of  our  religions — it  can  and, 
as  a  fact  does,  consist  with  agnosticism,  and  the  Love 
differs  utterly  from  the  Love  which  so  often  infects  so 
much  of  saintliness  with  eroticism  and  even  with  slyness 
in  daily  life.  Let  me  try  to  outline  his  belief,  using  his 
own  words  where  I  may. 

The  man  is  a  modern  man,  lost  in  doubt,  forlorn  in 
a  forest  of  doubt,  but  resolved  to  win  through  by  help 
of  the  monitor,  the  lantern  within  him. 

I  am  in  deep  woods, 

Between  the  two  twilights. 

Whatever  I  am  and  may  be, 
Write  it  down  to  the  light  in  me; 
I  am  I,  and  it  is  my  deed: 
For  I  know  that  the  paths  are  dark 
Between  the  two  twilights. 

I  have  made  my  choice  to  proceed 
By  the  light  I  have  within; 
And  the  issue  rests  with  me, 
Who  might  sleep  in  a  chrysalis, 
In  the  fold  of  a  simple  prayer, 
Between  the  two  twilights. 


1 82  Studies  in  Literature 

Having  nought  but  the  light  in  me, 
Which  I  take  for  my  soul  in  arms, 
Resolv'd  to  go  unto  the  wells 
For  water,  rejecting  spells, 
And  mouthings  of  magic  for  charms, 
And  the  cup  that  does  not  flow. 

I  am  in  deep  woods 

Between  the  two  twilights: 

Over  valley  and  hill 
I  hear  the  woodland  wave, 
Like  the  voice  of  Time,  as  slow, 
The  voice  of  Life,  as  grave, 
The  voice  of  Death,  as  still. 

He  finds  there  is  no  true  promise  (I  am  but  trying  to 
interpret)  in  religious  promises  of  a  compensating  life 
beyond  this  one.  Those  are  the 

spells, 
And  mouthings  of  magic  for  charms. 

He  is  not  appalled  by  the  prospect  of  sinking  back  and 
dissolving  into  the  earth  of  which  we  all  are  created  • 

Into  the  breast  that  gave  the  rose 
Shall  I  with  shuddering  fall? 

More  and  more  deeply  as  he  contemplates  Earth  he  feels 
that — from  her  as  we  spring,  to  her  as  we  return — so 
man  is  only  strong  by  constantly  reading  her  lesson, 
falling  back  to  refresh  himself  from  her  mother-springs, 
her  mother-milk.  Even  of  prayer  he  writes  in  one  of 
his  last  novels,  Lord  Ormont  and  His  Aminta: 

Prayer  is  power  within  us  to  communicate  with  the  de- 
sired beyond  our  thirsts.  .  .  .     And  let  the  prayer  be  as  a 


The  Poetry  of  George  Meredith      183 

little  fountain.  Rising  on  a  spout,  from  dread  of  the  hollow 
below,  the  prayer  may  be  prolonged  in  words  begetting 
words,  and  have  pulse  of  fervour:  the  spirit  of  it  has  fallen 
after  the  first  jet.  That  is  the  delirious  energy  of  our  crav- 
ing, which  has  no  life  in  our  souls.  We  do  not  get  to  any 
heaven  by  renouncing  the  Mother  we  spring  from ;  and  when 
there  is  an  eternal  secret  for  us,  it  is  best  to  believe  that 
Earth  knows,  to  keep  near  her,  even  in  our  utmost  aspira- 
tions. 

To  be  true  sons  of  Earth,  our  Mother:  to  learn  of 
our  dependence  on  her,  her  lesson :  to  be  frugal  of  self- 
consciousness  and  of  all  other  forms  of  selfishness;  to 
live  near  the  bare  ground,  and  finally  to  return  to  it 
without  whining:  that  is  the  first  article  of  his  creed. 
Earth  never  whines,  and  looks  for  no  son  of  hers  to 
whine: 

For  love  we  Earth,  then  serve  we  all; 

Her  mystic  secret  then  is  ours : 
We  fall,  or  view  our  treasures  fall, 

Unclouded,  as  beholds  her  flowers 

Earth,  from  a  night  of  frosty  wreck, 
Enrobed  in  morning's  mounted  fire, 

When  lowly,  with  a  broken  neck, 
The  crocus  lays  her  cheek  to  mire. 

To  set  up  your  hope  on  a  world  beyond  this  one  is 
(according  to  Meredith)  but  lust  for  life  prolonged — "a 
bloodthirsty  clinging  to  life"  in  Matthew  Arnold's 
phrase — demanding  a  passport  beyond  our  natural  term : 

The  lover  of  life  knows  his  labour  divine, 

And  therein  is  at  peace. 
The  lust  after  life  craves  a  touch  and  a  sign 

That  the  life  shall  increase. 


184  Studies  in  Literature 

The  lust  after  life,  in  the  chills  of  its  lust, 

Claims  a  passport  of  death. 
The  lover  of  life  sees  the  flame  in  the  dust 

And  a  gift  in  our  breath. 

Transience? — yes,  and  to  be  gratefully  accepted,  like 
human  love,  for  transience!  Earth,  the  Stoic  mother, 
looks  on  while  her  son  learns  the  lesson ;  she  will  not  coddle : 

He  may  entreat,  aspire, 
He  may  despair,  and  she  has  never  heed: 
She,  drinking  his  warm  sweat,  will  soothe  his  need, 
Not  his  desire. 

To  this  extent,  then,  he  is  one  with  the  beasts  that 
perish.  To  this  extent  he  is  like  Walt  Whitman's 
animals.  Says  Whitman : 

I  think  I  could  turn  and  live  with  animals  .  .  . 
They  do  not  sweat  and  whine  about  their  condition, 
They  do  not  lie  awake  in  the  dark  and  weep  for  their  sins, 
They  do  not  make  me  sick  discussing  their  duty  to  Gods. 

But  the  difference  is  that  man  understands:  understands 
that  as  in  his  mother  Earth, 

deepest  at  her  springs, 
Most  filial,  is  an  eye  to  love  her  young.  .  .  . 

so  he,  seeing  how  in  life  the  love  of  boy  and  maid  leads 
to  the  nourishing  and  love  of  children,  must  see  further 
that  his  first  duty  in  life  is  to  love  and  care  for  the  young. 
For  himself,  he  must  curb  our  "distempered  devil  of 
self, "  gluttonous  of  its  own  enjoyments.  Meredith 
promises  nothing — nothing  beyond  the  grave,  nothing 
on  this  side  of  it  but  love  sweetening  hard  fare : 

The  sense  of  large  charity  over  the  land, 

Earth's  wheaten  of  wisdom  dispensed  in  the  rough, 

And  a  bell  giving  thanks  for  a  sustenance  meal. 


The  Poetry  of  George  Meredith      185 


VII 


Well,  there  it  is,  Gentlemen,  for  you  to  take  or  to 
leave.  I  am  here  to  talk  about  literature  to  you,  not 
about  doctrine.  But  I  think  that,  after  the  mystics  we 
discussed  last  term,  you  may  find  the  herb  of  Meredith 
medicinal,  invigorating:  a  philosophy  austere  though 
suffused  with  love ;  mistaken,  if  you  will,  but  certainly 
not  less  than  high,  stern,  noble,  meet  for  men. 

I  have  indicated  some  of  his  poems  through  which  you 
may  arrive  at  it.  But  he  wrote  one  poem  which  stands 
apart  from  these  and  might  (you  may  say)  conceivably 
have  been  written  by  another  man.  If  I  allowed  this, 
which  I  cannot,  I  should  still  hold  that  no  one  short  of 
a  genius  could  have  invented  it;  as  I  hold  that,  with 
Spenser's  Epithalamion,  it  shares  claim  to  be  the 
greatest  song  of  human  love  in  our  language,  as  it  is 
certainly  the  topmost  of  its  age :  all  that  Swinburne  or 
Rossetti  ever  wrote  fading  out  like  fireworks  or  sick 
tapers  before  its  sunshine.  I  mean  Love  in  the  Valley, 
with  a  number  of  stanzas  from  which  I  shall  this  morn- 
ing conclude,  feeling  all  the  while  that  I  have  no  gift 
to  read  them  as  they  deserve. 

Love  in  the  Valley 

Under  yonder  beech-tree  single  on  the  green-sward, 

Couched  with  her  arms  behind  her  golden  head, 
Knees  and  tresses  folded  to  slip  and  ripple  idly, 

Lies  my  young  love  sleeping  in  the  shade. 
Had  I  the  heart  to  slide  an  arm  beneath  her, 

Press  her  parting  lips  as  her  waist  I  gather  slow, 
Waking  in  amazement  she  could  not  but  embrace  me : 

Then  would  she  hold  me  and  never  let  me  go? 


1 86  Studies  in  Literature 

Shy  as  the  squirrel  and  wayward  as  the  swallow, 

Swift  as  the  swallow  along  the  river's  light 
Circleting  the  surface  to  meet  his  mirrored  winglets, 

Fleeter  she  seems  in  her  stay  than  in  her  flight. 
Shy  as  the  squirrel  that  leaps  among  the  pine-tops, 

Wayward  as  the  swallow  overhead  at  set  of  sun, 
She  whom  I  love  is  hard  to  catch  and  conquer, 

Hard,  but  O  the  glory  of  the  winning  were  she  won! 

When  her  mother  tends  her  before  the  laughing  mirror, 

Tying  up  her  laces,  looping  up  her  hair, 
Often  she  thinks,  were  this  wild  thing  wedded, 

More  love  should  I  have,  and  much  less  care. 
When  her  mother  tends  her  before  the  lighted  mirror, 

Loosening  her  laces,  combing  down  her  curls, 
Often  she  thinks,  were  this  wild  thing  wedded, 

I  should  miss  but  one  for  the  many  boys  and  girls. 

Heartless  she  is  as  the  shadow  in  the  meadows 
Flying  to  the  hills  on  a  blue  and  breezy  noon. 

No,  she  is  athirst  and  drinking  up  her  wonder: 
Earth  to  her  is  young  as  the  slip  of  the  new  moon. 

Deals  she  an  unkindness,  'tis  but  her  rapid  measure, 
Even  as  in  a  dance;  and  her  smile  can  heal  no  less: 

Like  the  swinging  May-cloud  that  pelts  the  flowers  with 
hailstones 

Off  a  sunny  border,  she  was  made  to  bruise  and  bless. 

Lovely  are  the  curves  of  the  white  owl  sweeping 

Wavy  in  the  dusk  lit  by  one  large  star. 
Lone  on  the  fir-branch,  his  rattle-note  unvaried, 

Brooding  o'er  the  gloom,  spins  the  brown  eve-jar. 
Darker  grows  the  valley,  more  and  more  forgetting: 

So  were  it  with  me  if  forgetting  could  be  willed. 
Tell  the  grassy  hollow  that  holds  the  bubbling  well-spring, 

Tell  it  to  forget  the  source  that  keeps  it  filled. 


The  Poetry  of  George  Meredith      187 

Stepping  down  the  hill  with  her  fair  companions, 

Arm  in  arm,  all  against  the  raying  West, 
Boldly  she  sings,  to  the  merry  tune  she  marches, 

Brave  in  her  shape,  and  sweeter  unpossessed. 
Sweeter,  for  she  is  what  my  heart  first  awaking 

Whispered  the  world  was;  morning  light  is  she. 
Love  that  so  desires  would  fain  keep  her  changeless; 

Fain  would  fling  the  net,  and  fain  have  her  free. 

Happy  happy  time,  when  the  white  star  hovers 

Low  over  dim  fields  fresh  with  bloomy  dew, 
Near  the  face  of  dawn,  that  draws  athwart  the  darkness, 

Threading  it  with  colour,  like  yewberries  the  yew. 
Thicker  crowd  the  shades  as  the  grave  East  deepens 

Glowing,  and  with  crimson  a  long  cloud  swells. 
Maiden  still  the  morn  is;  and  strange  she  is,  and  secret; 

Strange  her  eyes;  her  cheeks  are  cold  as  cold  sea-shells. 


Prim  little  scholars  are  the  flowers  of  her  garden, 

Trained  to  stand  in  rows,  and  asking  if  they  please. 
I  might  love  them  well  but  for  loving  more  the  wild  ones : 

0  my  wild  ones !  they  tell  me  more  than  these. 
You,  my  wild  one,  you  tell  of  honied  field-rose, 

Violet,  blushing  eglantine  in  life;  and  even  as  they, 
They  by  the  wayside  are  earnest  of  your  goodness, 

You  are  of  life's,  on  the  banks  that  line  the  way. 

Peering  at  her  chamber  the  white  crowns  the  red  rose, 

Jasmine  winds  the  porch  with  stars  two  and  three. 
Parted  is  the  window;  she  sleeps;  the  starry  jasmine 

Breathes  a  falling  breath  that  carries  thoughts  of  me. 
Sweeter  unpossessed,  have  I  said  of  her  my  sweetest? 

Not  while  she  sleeps :  while  she  sleeps  the  jasmine  breathes, 
Luring  her  to  love;  she  sleeps;  the  starry  jasmine 

Bears  me  to  her  pillow  under  white  rose-wreaths. 


i88  Studies  in  Literature 

Gossips  count  her  faults;  they  scour  a  narrow  chamber 

Where  there  is  no  window,  read  not  heaven  or  her. 
"When  she  was  a  tiny,"  one  aged  woman  quavers, 

Plucks  at  my  heart  and  leads  me  by  the  ear. 
Faults  she  had  once  as  she  learnt  to  run  and  tumbled: 

Faults  of  feature  some  see,  beauty  not  complete. 
Yet,  good  gossips,  beauty  that  makes  holy 

Earth  and  air,  may  have  faults  from  head  to  feet. 

Hither  she  comes;  she  comes  to  me;  she  lingers, 

Deepens  her  brown  eyebrows,  while  in  new  surprise 
High  rise  the  lashes  in  wonder  of  a  stranger; 

Yet  am  I  the  light  and  living  of  her  eyes. 
Something  friends  have  told  her  fills  her  heart  to  brimming, 

Nets  her  in  her  blushes,  and  wounds  her,  and  tames. — 
Sure  of  her  haven,  O  like  a  dove  alighting, 

Arms  up,  she  dropped :  our  souls  were  in  our  names. 

A  Song  of  Songs,  which  is  Meredith's! 


THE  POETRY  OF 
THOMAS   HARDY 


TN  speaking  to  you,  the  other  day,  Gentlemen,  on  the 
*  poetry  of  George  Meredith,  I  admitted  how  faulty 
one's  judgment  may  be — nay  almost  must  needs  be — 
upon  all  modern  work.  ' '  Still, ' '  I  went  on,  "  the  task  of 
appraising  it  has  to  be  done,  for  the  books  of  our  time 
are  the  books  of  our  time.  They  tell  us  in  their  various 
ways,  'How  it  strikes  a  Contemporary.'" 

Yes:  but  I  deferred  a  qualification  of  this — a  some- 
what important  qualification — to  which  I  shall  begin 
today  by  asking  your  assent. 

My  qualification  is  this: — We  elders — from  among 
whom,  for  various  reasons,  your  professors  are  chosen 
as  a  rule — may  hope  to  help  you  in  understanding  poets 
long  since  dead.  For  Chaucer,  Shakespeare,  Milton, 
Dryden,  Wordsworth,  Byron,  Shelley,  are  removed 
almost  as  far  from  us  as  from  you.  They  have  passed 
definitely  into  the  ward  of  Time.  What  was  corrupt  or 
corruptible  in  them  is  now  dust,  though  we  embalm  it 
in  myrrh,  sandal-wood,  cassia :  dust  equally  for  us  and 
for  you :  what  was  incorruptible  flowers  as  freshly  for 
you  as  for  us.  We  have  but  the  sad  advantage  of  having 
studied  it  a  little  longer. 

189 


190  Studies  in  Literature 

Now  when  we  come  to  poets  of  the  time  of  Tennyson, 
Browning,  Matthew  Arnold,  our  difference  of  age  asserts 
itself;  middle-aged  men  of  the  'sixties,  young  men  of 
the  'nineties,  children  of  this  century,  read  them  at  cor- 
respondent removes,  perceptible  removes.  And,  though 
you  may  like  it  not,  it  is  (I  believe)  good  that  we  seniors 
should  testify  to  you  concerning  these  men  who  were 
our  seniors,  yet  alive  when  we  were  young,  and  gave 
us  in  youth,  believe  me,  even  such  thrills,  such  awed 
surmises,  such  wonders  and  wild  desires  as  you  catch 
in  your  turn  from  their  successors.  Nay,  it  is  salutary, 
I  believe;  for  the  reason  that  it  appears  to  be  the  rule 
for  each  new  generation  to  turn  iconoclast  on  its  father's 
poetic  gods.  You  will  scarcely  deny  that  on  some  of 
you  the  term  "Victorian"  acts  as  a  red  rag  upon  a 
young  bull  of  the  pasture :  that,  to  some  of  you,  Tenny- 
son is  "that  sort  of  stuff  your  uncle  read."  Well, 
bethink  you  that  the  children  of  yet  another  generation 
will  deal  so  and  not  otherwise  with  your  heroes :  that  it  is 
all  a  part  of  the  continuous  process  of  criticism  through 
which  our  roseate  raptures  and  our  lurid  antipathies 
pass,  if  not  into  the  light  of  common  day,  into  that  of 
serener  judgment.  Blame  not  your  uncle  that  at  the 
age  of  fourteen  or  earlier,  in  the  walled  garden  screened 
from  the  windows  of  the  house,  he  charged  among  the 
vegetables  chanting 

A  bow-shot  from  her  bower-eaves, 

He  rode  between  the  barley-sheaves  .  .  . 

or 

Strew  no  more  red  roses,  maidens, 

Leave  the  lilies  in  their  dew : 
Pluck,  pluck  cypress,  O  pale  maidens! 

Dusk,  O  dusk  the  hall  with  yew!  .  .  . 


or 


The  Poetry  of  Thomas  Hardy        191 


I  forgot,  thou  comest  from  thy  voyage — 
Yes,  the  spray  is  on  thy  cloak  and  hair. 

But  thy  dark  eyes  are  not  dimm'd,  proud  Iseult ! 
And  thy  beauty  never  was  more  fair  .  .  . 


or 


And   the   tent   shook,    for  mighty   Saul   shuddered:   and 

sparkles  'gan  dart 
From  the  jewels  that  woke  in  his  turban,  at  once  with  a 

start, 
All  its  lordly  male-sapphires,   and  rubies   courageous  at 

heart. 

For  to  dream  of  these  things,  and  to  awake  and  find  one- 
self an  uncle — that  is  the  common  lot.  Nor  blame  him 
that  he  continues  loyal  to  them.  It  keeps  him  human : 
it  may  set  you  pondering,  reconsidering  a  little;  and  so 
may  help  to  advance  the  true  business  of  criticism.  I 
come  down  a  little  further;  past  Morris  and  Swinburne 
to  Yeats  (say)  or  Francis  Thompson.  We  admired  and 
admire  them  as  generously  as,  I  hope,  you  admire  them ; 
but  I  think  not  quite  in  the  same  way.  To  us,  their 
almost  exact  contemporaries,  their  first  poems  appealed 
as  youth  to  youth;  with  none  of  the  authority  they 
exercise,  I  dare  to  say,  upon  you.  To  us  they  carried  no 
authority  at  all.  They  carried  hope,  they  bred  ardour: 
but  we  criticised  them  freely  as  poems  written  by  the 
best  of  us.  They  have  to  wait  a  few  years  for  the  race 
to  deify  them.  You  and  we  possess  them  by  a  different 
line  of  approach. 

Now  take  the  young  poets  who  are  your  contempor- 
aries. Of  them  I  say  sadly,  resignedly,  that  a  man 
even  of  my  years  has  no  right  to  speak,  or  very  little 


192  Studies  in  Literature 

power  to  speak  usefully.  Young  poets  write  not  for 
antiquity,  nor  for  middle-age.  They  write  for  you: 
their  appeal  is  to  you.  All  that  we  can  do  is  to  keep  our 
hearts  as  fresh  as  we  may;  to  bear  ever  in  mind  that  a 
father  can  guide  a  son  but  some  distance  on  the  road, 
and  the  more  wisely  he  guides  the  sooner  (alas !)  must  he 
lose  the  fair  companionship  and  watch  the  boy  run  on. 
It  may  sound  a  hard  saying,  but  we  can  only  keep  him 
admiring  the  things  we  admire  at  the  cost  of  pauperising 
his  mind.  It  may  sound  another  hard  saying,  that  the 
younger  poets  do  not  write  for  us  old  men ;  yet  it  is  the 
right  course  of  nature.  I  hope  William  Cory's  apo- 
phthegm is  not  strictly  true : 

One's  feelings  lose  poetic  flow 

Soon  after  twenty-seven  or  so; 

Professionising  modern  men 

Thenceforth  admire  what  pleased  them  then. 

But  if  it  be  (though  I  plead  for  some  rise  in  the  age- 
limit),  then  poetry  but  consents  with  the  rule  of  Nature 
whose  highest  interpreter  she  is.  Deepest  in  her  too — 
in  Meredith's  phrase: — 

Deepest  at  her  springs 

Most  filial,  is  an  eye  to  love  her  young. 


II 

After  this  somewhat  wistful  opening,  let  me  claim  an 
exception  for  my  subject  this  morning.  Thomas  Hardy 
— I  cannot  call  him  Doctor  Hardy  even  in  a  university 
which  not  long  ago  did  itself  honour  in  complimenting 
him — Thomas  Hardy  (long  may  he  live !)  is  my  elder,  and 


The  Poetry  of  Thomas  Hardy        193 

so  much  my  elder  that  for  thirty  years  I  have  reverenced 
him  as  a  master :  that  is,  as  a  master  of  the  Novel.  His 
first  novel  Desperate  Remedies  dates  back  to  1871 :  his 
first  artistic  triumph  Under  the  Greenwood  Tree,  to  1872. 
Pass  intervening  years  and  come  to  the  grand  close  in 
Tess  of  the  D'Urbervilles  (1891),  Jude  the  Obscure  (1895) : 
on  that  last  date  his  career  as  a  novelist  ceases,  and  at 
the  age  of  fifty-five.  Three  years  later,  in  1898,  he 
publishes  his  first  book  of  verse.  Now  any  pettifogging 
fellow  can  point  out  that  this  volume,  entitled  Wessex 
Poems,  contains  many  poems  composed  long  before  1898 
— some  so  far  back  as  1865 ;  and  the  more  easily  because 
Hardy  is  careful  to  print  the  dates.1  So  for  that 
matter  do  some  of  Hardy's  later  volumes  contain 
early  poems,  either  printed  as  first  written,  or  as  revised. 
But  no  petty  fog  can  obscure  the  plain  fact  that  in  1895, 
or  a  little  later,  Hardy  definitely  turned  his  back  on  prose 
fiction  and  started  to  appeal  to  a  new  generation  in 
verse ;  as  a  writer  of  high  poetical  verse  if  the  gods  should 
allow.  To  this  purpose  he  has  held.  A  second  volume, 
Poems  of  the  Past  and  the  Present  followed  in  1901 ;  The 
Dynasts,  Part  I  in  1903,  Part  II  in  1906,  Part  III  in 
1908,  Time's  Laughing  Stocks  in  1909.  Satires  of  Cir- 
cumstance were  collected  in  1914.  His  latest  volume 
Moments  of  Vision  appeared  but  the  other  day,  and 
bears  1917  on  its  title-page.  So,  seeing  that  all  this, 
including  that  great  epical  drama,  The  Dynasts, 
falls  within  the  ken  of  the  last  twenty  years,  and 
not  without  it,  you  may  allow  perhaps  that  it  con- 
cerns men  of  your  age  and  mine,  equally  if  not 
similarly. 

1  So  that,  as  Whistler  said  of  an  art-critic  who  judged  a  water-colour 
for  an  oil-painting,  "it  was  accurately  described  in  the  catalogue  and  he 
had  not  even  to  rely  on  his  sense -of  smell. " 


194  Studies  in  Literature 


III 


Ah,  but  you  may  answer,  "By  all  means  let  it  con- 
cern you.  The  point  is,  can  a  man  of  Thomas  Hardy's 
age  write  what  appeals  to  us?"  Well,  yes,  I  think  his 
poetry  may  appeal  to  you,  as  it  certainly  concerns  you. 
That  his  Muse  is  predominantly  melancholy  I  brush 
aside  as  no  bar  at  all.  If  youth  do  not  understand 
melancholy,  why  then  the  most  of  Shelley,  the  most  of 
Byron,  a  great  part  of  Keats,  or — to  come  to  later 
instances — a  great,  if  not  the  greater,  part  of  Francis 
Thompson  and  Yeats  and  most  of  the  young  poets  of 
the  Irish  school,  is  closed  to  it :  which  is  absurd.  "No, 
no!  go  not  to  Lethe"  for  Melancholy.  She  dwells 
neither  there  nor  with  middle-age: 

She  dwells  with  Beauty — Beauty  that  must  die; 

And  Joy,  whose  hand  is  ever  at  his  lips 
Bidding  adieu;  and  aching  Pleasure  nigh, 

Turning  to  poison  while  the  bee-mouth  sips: 
Ay,  in  the  very  temple  of  Delight 

Veil'd  Melancholy  has  her  sovran  shrine, 

Though  seen  of  none  save  him  whose  strenuous  tongue 
Can  burst  Joy's  grape  against  his  palate  fine; 

His  soul  shall  taste  the  sadness  of  her  might, 
And  be  among  her  cloudy  trophies  hung. 

No,  no :  it  is  proper  to  youth  to  know  melancholy  as  it 
is  to  have  raptures.  But  only  to  middle-age  is  it  granted 
to  be  properly  cheerful.  Yes,  there  are  compensations ! 
Let  us  assure  you  that  only  towards  middle-age  will 
you  burst  upon  a  palate  fine  the  true  juice  of  Chaucer's 
Prologue,  written  in  his  middle-age,  or  of  Montaigne,  or 
of  Moliere:  as  in  youth  you  will  choose  Rossetti,  but 


The  Poetry  of  Thomas  Hardy        195 

later  transfer  your  choice  to  William  Morris,  least  sick 
or  sorry,  best  of  cheer  among  the  poets  of  his  time. 

As  for  Hardy's  pessimism,  that,  to  be  sure,  does  not 
consort  well  with  youth.  But,  as  I  shall  hope  to  show, 
it  always  challenges  youth;  it  is  never  faded,  jejune, 
effete ;  it  never  plays — or,  to  be  accurate,  it  seldom  plays 
— with  old  mere  sentimentalities.  Even  when  it  plays 
with  commonplaces  it  never  leaves  them  conventions. 
In  his  depths  the  man  is  always  thinking,  and  his  per- 
plexities, being  all-important  and  yet  unsolved,  are  by 
your  generation  to  be  faced,  whether  you  solve  them 
or  not. 


IV 

For  another  point,  close  beside  and  yet  more  impor- 
tant, we  have  talked  of  insensibility  to  poetry  and  how 
with  the  years  it  may  steal  upon  the  reader.  Now 
most  of  you  remember,  I  daresay,  Matthew  Arnold's 
late  and  mournful  lines  on  the  drying  up  of  poesy  in  the 
writer: 

Youth  rambles  on  life's  arid  mount, 

And  strikes  the  rock,  and  finds  the  vein, 

And  brings  the  water  from  the  fount, 
The  fount  which  shall  not  flow  again. 

The  man  mature  with  labour  chops 
For  the  bright  stream  a  channel  grand, 

And  sees  not  that  the  sacred  drops 
Ran  off  and  vanish'd  out  of  hand. 

And  then  the  old  man  totters  nigh 
And  feebly  rakes  among  the  stones. 

The  mount  is  mute,  the  channel  dry; 
And  down  he  lays  his  weary  bones. 


196  Studies  in  Literature 

Well,  at  any  rate  Thomas  Hardy  contradicts,  and  in 
practice,  that  rather  cheap  kind  of  pessimism.  (There 
was  always,  I  think,  in  Matthew  Arnold  a  tendency  to 
be  Wordsworth's  widow,  and  to  fall  rather  exasper- 
atingly  "a-thinking  of  the  old  'un, "  who  undoubtedly 
did  in  later  life,  for  some  thirty  years  "rake  among  the 
stones"  and  died  in  the  end,  as  the  country  practitioner 
put  it,  "of  nothing  serious. ") 

I  am  aware  that  to  support  this  theory  of  desiccation 
in  poets  many  startling  instances  may  be  cited.  But 
without  saying  yea  or  nay,  or  supposing  it  symptomatic 
of  our  age,  I  cannot  think  it  quite  accidental  that  out 
of  the  small  number  of  poets  I  have  been  privileged  to 
know  personally,  two  should  have  tapped,  quite  late  in 
life,  a  well  of  poetry  abundant,  fresh,  pure;  of  lyrical 
poetry,  too,  fresher,  purer  and  far  more  abundant  than 
ever  they  found  as  young  men.  It  happened  so,  at  all 
events,  with  an  old  schoolmaster  of  mine,  the  late 
T.  E.  Brown,  whose  quality  and  whose  performance 
are  now  generally  admitted.  It  has  happened  so  with 
Thomas  Hardy.  His  first  poems — or,  to  say  it  more 
accurately,  the  poems  in  his  first-published  volume — 
were  stiff,  awkward.  They  often  achieved  a  curious, 
haunting,  countrified  lilt;  they  worked  always  true  to 
pattern:  you  felt  about  them,  too,  that  the  verses  held 
the  daemon  of  poetry,  constricted,  struggling  for  expres- 
sion. But  in  form  they  resembled  the  drawings  with 
which  the  author  illustrated  that  first  volume.  They 
were  architectural  draughts  (Hardy  had  been  an  archi- 
tect). When  they  told  a  story,  you  wondered  why  he, 
so  well  able  to  do  it,  had  not  written  this  particular 
story  in  prose.  The  poetic  thought  was  there :  but  the 
words  were  hard  and  precise,  sometimes  scientifically 
pedantic.  For  instance,  in  the  last  poem  I  shall  read 


The  Poetry  of  Thomas  Hardy        197 

today  he  drags  in  the  word  "stillicide, "  which  means  the 
drip  of  water  in  a  cavern,  or  from  eaves.  Stevenson 
has  recorded  his  mingled  feelings  on  discovering,  in  the 
process  of  his  scientific  studies,  that  "stillicide"  was  not 
a  crime.  The  early  poems  faceted  no  rays,  they  melted 
into  none  of  those  magical,  chemical  combinations  out 
of  which  words  became  poetry  and  a  new  thing,  "half 
angel  and  half  bird. " 

Years  pass,  with  their  efforts;  and  then  in  his  latest 
volume,  published  by  this  man  at  the  age  of  seventy- 
seven,  he  discovers  a  lyrical  note  which  I  shall  quote  to 
you,  not  at  all  because  its  theme  is  characteristic — for 
it  is  not — as  not  at  all  because  it  is  deep  and  wonted — 
for  it  is  not.  It  is,  if  you  will,  "silly  sooth,  and  dallies 
with  the  innocence  of  love. "  Yes,  just  for  that  reason 
I  quote  it,  and  because  in  a  poet  of  ordinary  evolution 
it  would  fall  naturally  among  the  Juvenilia: 

Lalage's  coming: 
Where  is  she  now,  O? 
Turning  to  bow,  O, 
And  smile,  is  she, 
Just  at  parting, 
Parting,  parting, 
As  she  is  starting 
To  come  to  me? 

Lalage's  coming, 
Nearer  is  she  now,  O, 
End  anyhow,  0, 
Today's  husbandry! 
Would  a  gilt  chair  were  mine. 
Slippers  of  vair  were  mine, 
Brushes  for  hair  were  mine 
Of  ivory ! 


198  Studies  in  Literature 

What  will  she  think,  O, 
She  who's  so  comely, 
Viewing  how  homely 
A  sort  are  we! 

Nought  here's  enough  for  her, 
All  is  too  rough  for  her, 
Even  my  love  for  her 
Poor  in  degree. 


Lalage's  come;  aye, 
Come  is  she  now,  O! 
Does  Heaven  allow,  O, 
A  meeting  to  be? 
Yes,  she  is  here  now, 
Here  now,  here  now, 
Nothing  to  fear  now, 
Here's  Lalage! 

If  that  be  toe  trivial,  take  another — remembering 
that  I  give  them  only  as  metrical  specimens,  merely  to 
show  how  this  poet,  whose  metrical  muscles  were  stiff 
and  hard  at  fifty-odd  has  at  seventy-odd  (the  date  is 
1913)  worked  them  supple,  so  that  now  the  verse  ca- 
dences to  the  feeling: 

Out  of  the  past  there  rises  a  week — 

Who  shall  read  the  years  O ! 
In  that  week  there  was  heard  a  singing — 

Who  shall  spell  the  years  0  !— 

In  that  week  there  was  heard  a  singing, 

And  the  white  owl  wondered  why. 
In  that  week  there  was  heard  a  singing, 
And  forth  from  the  casement  were  candles  flinging 
Radiance  that  fell  on  the  deodar  and  lit  up  the  path  thereby. 


The  Poetry  of  Thomas  Hardy        199 
Or  take  him  on  a  lower  note : 

I  need  not  go 
Through  sleet  and  snow 
To  where  I  know 
She  waits  for  me; 
She  will  wait  me  there 
Till  I  find  it  fair, 
And  have  time  to  spare 
From  company  .  .  . 


What — not  upbraid  me 
That  I  delayed  me, 
Nor  ask  what  stayed  me 
So  long?     Ah,  no! — 
New  cares  may  claim  me, 
New  loves  inflame  me, 
She  will  not  blame  me, 
But  suffer  it  so. 

I  reserve  for  the  whole  the  most  individual  quality  in 
Hardy's  versifying  (to  me  an  individual  excellence) 
which  has  given  it  character  from  the  first — I  mean  his 
country  lilt;  because  I  must  approach  it,  and  the  man, 
and  his  philosophy  of  life,  all  three  by  one  path. 


First  of  all,  and  last  of  all,  he  is  a  countryman.  And 
the  first  meaning  of  this  is  that  his  mind  works  like  most 
country  minds  in  this  great  little  island.  They  are 
introspective  because  insular :  and  their  soil  is  cumbered, 
piled  with  history  and  local  tradition :  a  land  of  arable 
inveterately  and  deeply  ploughed;  of  pastures  close- 
webbed  at  the  root  by  rain  and  sun  persistently  reviving 


2oo  Studies  in  Literature 

the  blade  which  the  teeth  of  sheep  and  cattle  persist- 
ently crop;  of  its  heaths — such  as  Newmarket — where 
racehorses  in  training  gallops  beat  their  hoofs  in  the 
very  footprints  of  Boadicea's  mares  and  stallions;  of 
mines,  working  yet,  that  paid  their  firstfruits  to  Sidon 
and  Carthage,  choked  harbours,  dead  empires.  In  this 
land  of  ours,  I  say,  the  mind  of  a  native  must  dig 
vertically  down  through  strata.  Though  it  be  the  mind 
of  a  farm  labourer,  it  knows  its  acres  intimately;  not 
only  their  rotation  of  crops,  and  slant  to  wind  or  sun, 
but  their  several  humours,  caprices,  obstinacies  of  soil; 
and,  always  with  an  eye  to  windward,  hopes  for  the 
weather  it  knows  likeliest  to  profit  them.  So  when, 
as  with  Hardy,  a  countryman  has  the  further  knowledge 
that  comes  of  book-learning,  and  acquires  with  it  the 
historical  sense,  that  sense  still  feels  vertically  down- 
wards, through  soil  and  subsoil,  through  the  mould  of 
Norman,  Dane,  Saxon,  Celt,  Iber,  and  of  tribes  beyond 
history,  to  the  geological  formations  layered  over  by 
this  accumulated  dust. 

Further,  you  know  that  the  tales  of  old  time  which 
haunt  a  true  countryman's  imagination  are  tales  of 
violence,  of  lonely  houses  where  suppressed  passions 
inhabit  to  flame  out  in  murder  or  suicide,  to  make  a 
legend,  to  haunt  a  cross-road  or  a  mile-post:  fierce, 
primitive  deeds  breaking  up  through  the  slow  crust  of 
custom:  unaccountable,  but  not  unnatural.  Along 
the  king's  highway,  a  gibbet  where  sheepstealers  used 
to  swing :  in  such  and  such  a  copse  a  tree,  on  that  tree 
such  and  such  a  branch  where  a  poor  girl  hanged  her- 
self for  love:  at  the  three  roads  by  the  blacksmith's  a 
triangle  of  turf  still  called  "Betsy  Beneath"  because 
there  they  buried  her  uncoffined  and  drove  a  stake 
through  her. 


The  Poetry  of  Thomas  Hardy        201 

Further,  if  you  know  your  rural  England,  you  will 
know  that  every  village  in  it  is  a  small  shop  of  gossip. 
"Have  you  heard?  Young  Peter  Hodge  is  at  upsides 
with  his  wife?  yes,  already,  and  her  only  expectin'." 
"They  tell  me  Farmer  So-and-so  have  a  mortgage,  if 
you'll  believe,  on  the  Lower  Barton  Farm.  "  "So,  that 
girl  Jenny  is  in  trouble  as  I  always  foretold. "  Ven- 
geance o'  Jenny's  case! 

Well  as  I  interpret  this  most  genuine,  most  auto- 
chthonous of  living  writers,  I  see  him  leaning  over  the 
gate  of  a  field  with  a  wood's  edge  bordering  it.  He 
knows  the  wood  so  intimately  that  his  ear  detects  and 
separates  the  notes  of  the  wind  as  it  soughs  in  oak, 
hornbeam,  pine  (see  the  opening  of  Under  the  Greenwood 
Tree,  or  The  Woodlanders,  passim).  Of  the  sheep  on 
the  pasture  he  knows  when  their  lambs  will  fall.  He 
judges  the  grass,  if  it  be  sufficient.  He  knows  that 
breast-shaped  knob  on  the  knap  of  the  hill  and  how 
many  centuries  have  worn  to  this  what  was  the  high 
burial  mound  of  a  British  chieftain:  he  knows  the  lias 
beneath  the  chief's  grave,  and  the  layered  rock  still 
deeper — that  is,  he  knows  as  near  as  geologists  can 
tell.  He  knows,  having  a  boy's  eye  for  this,  where 
a  nest  is  likeliest  to  be,  and  of  what  bird.  But 
what  more  intrigues  him  than  any  of  these  things 
— still  as  he  follows  the  line  of  the  hedge — is  that 
under  one  innocent-looking  thorn  such  and  such  a 
parish  tragedy  was  enacted.  Just  here,  they  tell, 
two  brothers  quarrelled  and  one  smote  the  other 
with  a  reaping-hook;  just  there  was  lovers'  bliss 
and  just  there,  a  brief  while  later,  the  woman's  heart 
broke. 

For  (you  must  know)  though  a  gossip's,  this  country- 
man's heart  is  strangely  tender.  Let  me  pause  for  proof, 


202  Studies  in  Literature 

by  one  short  poem,  that  even  Blake's  heart  was  not 
tenderer  than  Hardy's.     It  is  called 

The  Blinded  Bird 

So  zestfully  canst  thou  sing? 

And  all  this  indignity, 

With  God's  consent,  on  thee! 

Blinded  ere  yet  a-wing 

By  the  red-hot  needle  thou, 

I  stand  and  wonder  how 

So  zestfully  thou  canst  sing  .  .  . 

Resenting  not  such  wrong, 
Thy  grievous  pain  forgot, 
Eternal  dark  thy  lot, 
Groping  thy  whole  life  long, 
After  that  stab  of  fire; 
Enjailed  in  pitiless  wire; 
Resenting  not  such  wrong! 

Who  hath  charity?    This  bird. 
Who  suffereth  long  and  is  kind, 
Is  not  provoked,  though  blind 
And  alive  ensepulchred  ? 
Who  hopeth,  endureth  all  things? 
Who  thinketh  no  evil,  but  sings? 
Who  is  divine?     This  bird. 

Above  all,  his  pity  is  for  women,  partly  for  the  fate 
that  condemns  their  bloom  to  be  brief  and  evanescent 
(unless  written  in  time  on  a  man's  heart  where  it  never 
grows  old) — so  brief  the  chance,  with  no  term  to  the 
after-pain!  But  he  pities  them  more  because  he  sees 
the  increase  of  our  race  to  rest  on  an  unfair  game, 
in  which,  nine  throws  out  of  ten,  the  dice  are  loaded 


The  Poetry  of  Thomas  Hardy        203 

against  the  woman;  a  duel  of  sex,  almost  at  times  an 
internecine  duel,  which  his  soul  grows  to  abhor:  for 

Victrix  causa  deis  placuit,  sed  victa  Catoni, 

and,  looking  up,  he  sees  God,  or  whatever  gods  may  be, 
deriding  the  victim.  We  are  all  flies  to  these  gods  who 
tease  us  for  their  sport.  Even  if  man  labour  and  profit 
his  fellows  with  an  idea,  yet,  in  Milton's  phrase  (as 
quoted  by  Hardy) 

Truth  like  a  bastard  comes  into  the  world 

Never  without  ill-fame  to  him  who  gives  her  birth. 

But,  for  women,  who,  nine  times  out  of  ten,  pay  the 
price  of  the  great  jest,  Hardy  feels  most  acutely. 
"Poor  wounded  name, "  he  quotes  and  inscribes  on  the 
title-page  of  Tess 

Poor  wounded  name!  my  bosom  as  a  bed 
Shall  lodge  thee  .  .  . 

and  in  the  last  sentence  of  his  most  sorrowful  tale  he 
flings  his  now  famous  taunt  up  at  "the  President  of  the 
Immortals,"  even  as  passionately  as  did  Cleopatra  for 
her  own  loss: 

Iras.  Madam ! 

Charmian.     O  madam,  madam,  madam! 

Iras.  Royal  Egypt 

Empress ! 

Charmian  Peace,  peace,  Iras! 

Cleopatra.       No  more  but  e'en  a  woman,  and  commanded 
By  such  poor  passion  as  the  maid  that  milks 

(Tess  was  a  dairy-maid) 


204  Studies  in  Literature 

And  does  the  meanest  chares.     It  were  for  me 
To  throw  my  sceptre  at  the  injurious  gods; 
To  tell  them  that  this  world  did  equal  theirs 
Till  they  had  stol'n  our  jewel. 


VI 

Say  what  you  will,  this  indignation  in  Hardy  is  noble, 
is  chivalrous,  and,  as  the  world  is  worked,  it  has  much 
reason  at  the  back  of  its  furious  "Why? — Why? — 
Why?"  It  has  great  excuse  when  it  sours  down  to 
bitterest  irony,  as  in  this  early  ditty  of  two  country- 
bred  girls  meeting  in  London — and  you  will  note  how 
the  old  market-jog  of  rhythm  and  rhyme  ache  them- 
selves into  the  irony: 

"O  'Melia,  my  dear,  this  does  everything  crown! 
Who  could  have  supposed  I  should  meet  you  in  Town? 
And  whence  such  fair  garments,  such  prosperi-ty?" — 
"O  didn't  you  know  I'd  been  ruined?"  said  she. 

— "You  left  us  in  tatters,  without  shoes  or  socks, 
Tired  of  digging  potatoes,  and  spudding  up  docks; 
And  now  you've  gay  bracelets  and  bright  feathers  three ! " — 
"Yes:  that's  how  we  dress  when  we're  ruined,  "said  she.  .  .  . 


— "I  wish  I  had  feathers,  a  fine  sweeping  gown, 
And  a  delicate  face,  and  could  strut  about  Town!" — 
"My  dear — a  raw  country  girl,  such  as  you  be, 
Isn't  equal  to  that.     You  ain't  ruined,"  said  she. 

Women  (I  think)  are  more  impatient  of  irony  than  men : 
and  when  Hardy  turns  his  irony  upon  them — as  he  often 
does  in  his  novels — I  have  observed  that  they  eye  it 


The  Poetry  of  Thomas  Hardy       205 

suspiciously,  restively;  they  would  be  undetected  in 
their  devices,  hate  instinctively  that  which  shows  their 
secret  ways  of  power  at  work  under  show  of  servility. 
Hardy,  their  champion,  would  break  down  the  servility : 
and  they  distrust  him  for  it. 

Well — and  though  they  be  ungrateful — perhaps  their 
instinct  is  true  and  his  is  a  childless  creed :  and  for  men, 
though  it  be  manly  to  face  it  out  and  test  it,  an  unhope- 
ful creed.  For  women  it  must  be  certainly  unpromising 
to  read  the  doctrine  of  Jude  the  Obscure,  which  works 
out  to  this,  that  man's  aspirations  to  make  the  world 
better  are  chiefly  clogged  by  the  flesh,  and  that  flesh  is 
woman.  To  man  it  can  scarcely  be  less  heartening  to 
be  barred  with  the  question 

Has  some  Vast  Imbecility, 

Mighty  to  build  and  blend, 

But  impotent  to  tend, 
Framed  us  in  jest,  and  left  us  now  to  hazardry? 

Or  come  we  of  an  Automaton 

Unconscious  of  our  pains? 

Or  are  we  live  remains 
Of  Godhead  dying  downwards,  brain  and  eye 


Well,  when  it  comes  to  this,  I  for  one  can  only  answer 
that,  if  it  were,  we  must  yet  carry  on  somehow,  sing  a 
song  on  the  raft  we  cannot  steer,  keep  a  heart  of  sorts, 
and  share  out  the  rations  to  the  women  and  children. 
But  that  word  recalls  me.  It  is  a  childless  creed.  It 
has  no  more  evidence  than  Meredith's:  intellectually 
viewed,  I  find  them  equal:  but  Meredith  has  hope, 
hope  for  the  young:  and  I  must  put  my  money  on 
hope. 


206  Studies  in  Literature 

VII 

Further,  when  I  consider,  these  poems — as  those 
novels — crowd  the  sardonic  laughter  of  the  gods  too 
thickly.  There  is  irony  enough  in  life,  God  wot;  but 
here  is  a  man  possessed  with  it.  All  men,  all  stories, 
tramp  with  him  to  his  titles  Life's  Little  Ironies,  Satires 
of  Circumstance,  Time's  Laughing  Stocks,1  So  one 
hesitates  and  asks :  Is  life,  after  all,  a  parish  full  of  bad 
practical  jokes  ?  Is  catholic  man  like  this?  No :  as  we 
take  up  poem  after  poem  in  which  human  loves  and 
aspirations  find  themselves  thwarted,  set  astray,  or 
butting  against  some  door  that,  having  opened  a  glimpse 
of  paradise,  shuts  by  some  power  idiotically  mischievous 
if  not  malignant — shuts  with  a  click  of  the  latch  and  a 
chuckle  of  mocking  laughter — we  tell  ourselves,  "These 
things  happen:  but  in  any  such  crowd  they  never  and 
in  no  life  happen. "  And  while  we  debate  this,  Hardy 
confounds  us,  spreading  out  his  irony  upon  one  grand 
ironic  drama,  The  Dynasts. 

I  suppose  The  Dynasts  to  be — and  I  shall  not  allow 
for  rival  Doughty's  noble  but  remote,  morose,  almost 
Chinese,  epic,  The  Dawn  in  Britain  (this,  too,  a  product 

1  Why,  O  why  will  authors  choose  loose,  woolly,  undescriptive  titles? 
To  take  another  writer  of  genius,  why  Traffics  and  Discoveries,  Life's 
Handicap,  Many  Inventions,  The  Day's  Work  ?  And,  to  return  to  Hardy, 
what  differentiates  an  Irony  of  Life  from  a  Satire  of  Circumstance,  and 
do  not  both  equally  make  the  victim  a  Laughing  Stock  of  Time?  And 
if  there  be  a  difference,  are  the  poems  divided  by  the  titles  baaed  on  any 
fundamentum  divisionis  ?  And,  anyhow,  what  is  wrong  with  The  Iliad, 
King  Lear,  Don  Quixote,  John  GUpin,  Tom  Jones,  David  Copperfield  ? 
What  is  right  with  The  Eternal  Mystery,  Some  Emotions  and  a  Moral, 
and  so  on?  Are  they  not  all  too  loose  for  their  contents?  And  what  is 
wrong  again  with  a  house — The  House  with  the  Seven  Gables,  Bleak 
House,  The  House  with  the  Green  Shutters,  The  House  of  Usher,  A  Doll's 
House,  The  House  that  Jack  Built  ? 


The  Poetry  of  Thomas  Hardy        207 

of  a  man  well  past  meridian) — I  suppose  The  Dynasts  to 
be  the  grandest  poetic  structure  planned  and  raised  in 
England  in  our  time.  In  the  soar  and  sweep  of  that 
drama  the  poet — whom,  a  moment  ago,  we  were  on  the 
point  of  accusing  for  provincial,  lays  Europe  beneath 
us  "flat,  as  to  an  eagle's  eye" — a  map  with  little  things 
in  multitudes,  ants  in  armies,  scurrying  along  the  threads 
which  are  roads,  violently  agitated  in  nodules  which  are 
cities.  But  let  me  quote  one  or  two  of  Hardy's  own 
stage  directions  and  thereby  not  only  save  myself  the 
vain  effort  to  do  what  has  been  perfectly  done  for  me, 
but  send  you,  if  you  would  practise  the  art  of  con- 
densed and  vivid  description,  to  models  as  good  as  can 
be  found  in  English  prose.  Imagine  yourselves,  then, 
an  audience  aloft  and  listening  to  the  talk  of  such  Spirits 
as  watch  over  human  destinies. 

The  nether  sky  opens,  and  Europe  is  disclosed  as  a  prone 
and  emaciated  figure,  the  Alps  shaping  like  a  backbone,  and 
the  branching  mountain-chains  like  ribs,  the  peninsular 
plateau  of  Spain  forming  a  head.  Broad  and  lengthy  low- 
lands stretch  from  the  north  of  France  across  Russia  like  a 
grey-green  garment  hemmed  by  the  Ural  mountains  and 
the  glistening  Arctic  Ocean. 

The  point  of  view  then  sinks  downward  through  space, 
and  draws  near  to  the  surface  of  the  perturbed  countries, 
where  the  people,  .  .  .  are  seen  writhing,  crawling,  heaving, 
and  vibrating,  in  their  various  cities  and  nationalities. 

(A  picture  of  Europe  today.)     Then 

A  new  and  penetrating  light  descends  on  the  spectacle, 
enduing  men  and  things  with  a  seeming  transparency,  and 
exhibiting  as  one  organism  the  anatomy  of  life  and  move- 
ment in  all  humanity  and  vitalized  matter  included  in  the 
display. 


208  Studies  in  Literature 

So  the  focus  slides  down  and  up  and  again  down:  it 
narrows  on  the  British  House  of  Commons,  or  on  a 
village  green,  or  on  a  bedroom  in  a  palace :  it  expands  to 
sweep  the  field  of  Austerlitz.  I  ask  you  to  turn  for 
yourselves  to  one  marvellous  scene  of  a  cellar,  full  of 
drunken  deserters,  looking  out  on  the  snow- tormented 
road  along  which  straggles  the  army  of  Sir  John  Moore 
and  struggles  for  Coruna.  .  .  .  But  here  is  a  passage  in 
the  retreat  from  Moscow : 

What  has  floated  down  from  the  sky  upon  the  Army  is  a 
flake  of  snow.  Then  come  another  and  another,  till  natural 
features,  hitherto  varied  with  the  tints  of  autumn,  are  con- 
founded, and  all  is  phantasmal  grey  and  white. 

The  caterpillar  shape  still  creeps  laboriously  nearer:  but 
instead  of  increasing  in  size  by  the  rules  of  perspective,  it 
gets  more  attenuated,  and  there  are  left  upon  the  ground 
behind  it  minute  parts  of  itself,  which  are  speedily  flaked 
over,  and  remain  as  white  pimples  by  the  wayside. 

Pines  rise  mournfully  on  each  side  of  the  nearing  object. 
.  .  .  Endowed  with  enlarged  powers  of  audition  as  of 
vision,  we  are  struck  by  the  mournful  taciturnity  that  pre- 
vails. Nature  is  mute.  Save  for  the  incessant  flogging  of 
the  wind-broken  and  lacerated  horses  there  are  no  sounds. 

The  diction  of  the  poem  itself  seldom  rises  to  match 
its  conception.  In  the  rustic  scenes  we  get  that  incom- 
parable prose,  nervous,  and  vernacular,  yet  Biblical, 
which  Hardy  has  made  out  of  his  native  dialect :  but  the 
major  human  characters  talk  in  verse  which  is  often  too 
prosy,  and  the  watching  Spirits  attain  but  spasmodi- 
cally to  the  height  of  their  high  argument.  Their  lips 
are  not  touched  by  any  such  flame  as  kindles  (for 
example)  the  lips  of  the  watching  Spirits  in  Prometheus 
Unbound.  But  we  must  not  judge  a  poem  of  The 


The  Poetry  of  Thomas  Hardy        209 

Dynasts'  range  and  scope  apart  from  its  total  impres- 
sion :  and  that,  in  The  Dynasts  is  tremendous.  And  I  at 
this  moment  am  committing  a  deadly  artistic  sin  against 
proportion  in  attempting  to  talk  of  it  in  a  part  of  a  lec- 
ture. It  should  have  two  lectures  to  itself. 

As  for  its  philosophy,  one  naturally  compares  it  with 
that  of  Tolstoy's  great  novel  War  and  Peace.  But 
whereas  Tolstoy  and  Hardy  both  see  Napoleon  as  a 
puppet  under  Heaven — as  Plato  pronounces  Man  to  be 
"at  his  best  a  noble  plaything  for  the  gods" — the  one, 
being  Russian  and  an  idealist,  sees  the  little  great  man's 
ends  shaped  by  a  Divinity,  watching  over  Sion,  having 
purpose :  the  other,  a  most  honest  pessimist,  can  detect 
no  purpose,  or  no  beneficent  one.  For  all  he  can  see, 
God  works — if  He  work — a  magnipotent  Will,  but 

Like  a  knitter  drowsed, 
Whose  fingers  play  in  skilled  unmindfulness, 
The  will  has  woven  with  an  absent  heed 
Since  life  first  was;  and  ever  will  so  weave. 

And  there  for  today  we  must  leave  it. 

VIII 

I  fall  back,  to  conclude,  upon  Wessex;  appropriately, 
I  think,  upon  a  churchyard  in  a  corner  there,  where 
kinsmen,  friends,  neighbours,  mingle  their  dust;  where, 
as  Hardy's  friend  and  homelier  predecessor  put  it, 

The  zummer  air  o'  theas  green  hill 
'V  a-heav'd  in  bosoms  now  all  still. 

Faithful  to  this  dust,  to  ancestry,  old  associations,  the 

Nescio  qu&  natale  solum  dulcedine  cunctos 

Ducit,  et  immemores  non  sinit  esse  sui.  .  .  . 


210  Studies  in  Literature 


the  native  returns:  and  the  dead  whisper,  and  this  is 
what  they  tell : 

William  Dewy,  Tranter  Reuben,  Farmer  Ledlow  late  at 

plough, 
Robert's  kin,  and  John's,  and  Ned's, 

And  the  Squire,  and  Lady  Susan,  lie  in  Mellstock  church- 
yard now! 

"Gone,"  I  call  them,  gone  for  good,  that  group  of  local 

hearts  and  heads; 
Yet  at  mothy  curfew-tide, 
And  at  midnight  when  the  noon-heat  breathes  it  back 

from  walls  and  leads, 

They've  a  way  of  whispering  to  me — fellow-wight  who 

yet  abide — 

In  the  muted  measured  note 
Of  a  ripple  under  archways,  or  a  lone  cave's  stillicide : 

"We  have  triumphed:  this  achievement  turns  the  bane 

to  antidote, 

Unsuccesses  to  success, 
Many  thought-worn  eves  and  morrows  to  a  morrow  free 

of  thought. 

"  No  more  need  we  corn  and  clothing,  feel  of  old  terrestrial 

stress; 

Chill  detraction  stirs  no  sigh; 
Fear  of  death  has  even  bygone  us :  death  gave  all  that  we 


W.  D.     "Ye  mid  burn  the  wold  bass-viol  that  I  set  such 

vallie  by." 
Squire.  "You  may  hold  the  manse  in  fee, 

You  may  wed  my  spouse,  my  children's  memory  of  me 
may  decry. " 


The  Poetry  of  Thomas  Hardy       211 

Lady.     "You  may  have  my  rich  brocades,  my  laces;  take 

each  household  key; 
Ransack  coffer,  desk,  bureau; 
Quiz  the  few  poor  treasures  hid  there,  con  the 
letters  kept  by  me. " 

Far.      "Ye  mid  zell  my  favourite  heifer,  ye  mid  let  the 

charlock  grow, 

Foul  the  grinterns,  give  up  thrift. " 
Wife.     "If  ye  break  my  best  blue  china,  children,  I  shan't 

care  or  ho." 

All.        "We've  no  wish  to  hear  the  tidings,  how  the  people's 

fortunes  shift; 
What  your  daily  doings  are; 
Who  are  wedded,  born,  divided;  if  your  lives  beat 
slow  or  swift. 

"Curious  not  the  least  are  we  if  our  intents  you 

make  or  mar, 

If  you  quire  to  our  old  tune, 
If  the  City  stage  still  passes,  if  the  weirs  still  roar 

afar." 

— Thus,  with  very  gods'  composure,  freed  those 

crosses  late  and  soon 
Which,  in  life,  the  Trine  allow 
(Why,  none  witteth),  and  ignoring  all  that  haps 

beneath  the  moon, 

William  Dewy,  Tranter  Reuben,  Farmer  Ledlow 

late  at  plough, 

Robert's  kin,  and  John's,  and  Ned's, 
And  the  Squire,  and  Lady  Susan,  murmur  mildly 

to  me  now. 


COLERIDGE 

THE  story  of  Coleridge's  life  is  hard  to  write  and, 
in  a  sense,  even  harder  to  read:  hard  to  write 
because  the  innumerable  lapses,  infirmities,  defections 
of  the  will,  all  claiming — as  facts — to  be  chronicled, 
cannot  but  obscure  that  lovable  living  presence  to  which 
all  his  contemporaries  bore  witness  and  to  which  the 
biographer  must  hold  fast  or  his  portrait  misses  most 
that  is  true  and  essential ;  and  hard  to  read  because  the 
reader,  at  the  hundredth  instance  of  Coleridge's^  taking 
the  wrong  coach,  or  forgetting  to  write  to  his  wife  and 
family,  or  accepting  money  and  neglecting  the  conditions 
on  which  it  was  bestowed,  is  apt  to  let  Christian  charity 
go  to  the  winds,  and  so  on  his  part,  too,  to  miss,  nor 
care  that  he  misses,  the  better  Coleridge  which  is  the 
real  Coleridge,  the  affectionate  forgiving  Coleridge,  so 
anxious  to  cure  his  faults,  so  eager  to  make  people  see, 
so  childlike  and  yet  condemned  to  sit 

obscure 

In  the  exceeding  lustre  and  the  pure 
Intense  irradiation  of  a  mind. 

The  story  not  only  exasperates  the  temper ;  it  dodges 
the  understanding,  and  leaves  even  the  patient  reader 
in  such  bewilderment  as,  no  doubt,  afflicted  the  much- 
enduring  Odysseus  after  a  third  attempt  to  embrace  his 

212 


Coleridge  213 

mother  in  the  Shades.  For  Providence  (as  De  Quincey 
put  it)  set  '  perpetual  relays"  along  Coleridge's  path 
through  life.  We  pursue  the  man  and  come  up  with 
group  after  group  of  his  friends :  and  each,  as  we  demand 
"What  have  you  done  with  Coleridge?"  answers, 
"Coleridge?  That  wonderful  fellow?  ...  He  was 
here  just  now,  and  we  helped  him  forward  a  little 
way." 

The  late  James  Dykes  Campbell  (to  whose  Life  of 
Coleridge  the  reader  is  referred)  took  up  his  task  with 
enthusiasm  and  performed  it  with  astonishing  success. 
He  honoured  the  poet's  memory  a  little  "on  this  side 
idolatry."  Yet  as  we  follow  his  condensed  narrative  we 
feel  the  growth  of  misgivings  in  the  writer's  mind,  and 
at  the  close  he  has  to  make  a  clean  breast  of  them.  ' '  If , " 
says  he,  "my  presentment  of  what  I  believe  to  be  the 
truth  be  not  found  to  tend,  on  the  whole,  to  raise 
Coleridge  in  the  eyes  of  men,  I  shall,  I  confess,  feel 
both  surprised  and  disappointed. " 

I  am  sure  that  the  temple,  with  all  the  rubble  which 
blended  with  its  marble,  must  have  been  a  grander  whole 
than  any  we  are  able  to  reconstruct  for  ourselves  from  the 
stones  which  lie  about  the  field.  The  living  Coleridge  was 
ever  his  own  apology — men  and  women  who  neither  shared 
nor  ignored  his  shortcomings,  not  only  loved  him  but 
honoured  and  followed  him.  This  power  of  attraction, 
which  might  almost  be  called  universal,  so  diverse  were  the 
minds  and  natures  attracted,  is  itself  conclusive  proof  of 
very  rare  qualities.  We  may  read  and  re-read  his  life,  but 
we  cannot  know  him  as  the  Lambs,  or  the  Wordsworths,  or 
Poole,  or  Hookham  Frere,  or  the  Gillmans,  or  Green  knew 
him.  Hatred  as  well  as  love  may  be  blind,  but  friendship 
has  eyes,  and  their  testimony  may  wisely  be  used  in  correct- 
ing our  own  impressions. 


214  Studies  in  Literature 

Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge  was  born  on  October  21, 
1772,  at  the  vicarage  of  Ottery  St.  Mary  in  Devonshire, 
the  youngest  of  nine  sons  by  a  second  marriage.  His 
father,  the  Reverend  John  Coleridge,  was  an  amiable, 
absent-minded  scholar,  and  apparently  somewhat  un- 
practical. We  are  told  that  he  printed  several  books 
by  subscription,  and  he  tried  to  improve  the  Latin 
grammars  in  use  by  calling  the  ablative  case  the 
"  quale-quarequidditive. "  He  died  in  1781,  and  a 
few  months  later  young  Samuel  obtained  a  presentation 
to  Christ's  Hospital. 

The  school  and  the  Coleridge  of  those  days  were 
afterwards  depicted  in  imperishable  colours  by  Charles 
Lamb,  who,  though  Coleridge's  junior  by  two  years, 
had  become  a  Blue-coat  boy  some  months  earlier.  In 
Christ's  Hospital  Five-and-Thirty  Years  Ago,  by  one  of 
those  tricks  which  were  dear  to  him  and  endear  him  to 
us,  Lamb  professedly  supplements  his  own  Recollections 
of  Christ's  Hospital  with  the  recollections  of  a  lad  not 
fortunate  like  him  in  having  a  home  and  parents  near. 

I  was  a  poor  friendless  boy.  My  parents,  and  those  who 
should  care  for  me,  were  far  away.  Those  few  acquaint- 
ances of  theirs,  which  they  could  reckon  upon  being  kind 
to  me  in  the  great  city,  after  a  little  forced  notice,  which 
they  had  the  grace  to  take  of  me  on  my  first  arrival  in  town, 
soon  grew  tired  of  my  holiday  visits.  They  seemed  to  them 
to  recur  too  often,  though  I  found  them  few  enough;  and, 
one  after  another,  they  all  failed  me,  and  I  felt  myself  alone 
among  six  hundred  playmates. 

0  the  cruelty  of  separating  a  poor  lad  from  his  early  home- 
stead! The  yearnings  which  I  used  to  have  towards  it  in 
those  unfledged  years!  How,  in  my  dreams,  would  my 
native  town  (far  in  the  west)  come  back,  with  its  church, 
and  trees,  and  faces!  How  I  would  wake  weeping,  and  in 


Coleridge  215 

the  anguish  of  my  heart  exclaim  upon  sweet  Calne  in  Wilt- 
shire! 

The  child  is  Coleridge,  of  course,  and  sweet  Calne 
in  Wiltshire  is  sweet  Ottery  in  Devon,  disguised.  Of 
course  Coleridge  felt  this  loneliness:  a  nature  so  sen- 
sitive could  not  help  feeling  it;  and  sixteen  years 
later  in  Frost  at  Midnight  he  feelingly  recalled  it,  and 
promised  his  own  child  a  happier  fate.  But,  equally 
of  course,  he  did  not  feel  it  all  the  time.  His  earliest 
letters  contain  allusions  to  half-crowns  and  "a  plumb 
cake,"  and  in  due  course,  as  he  grows  up,  the  theme 
changes  naturally  to  raiment.  ' '  You  will  excuse  me  for 
reminding  you  that,  as  our  holidays  commence  next 
week,  and  I  shall  go  out  a  good  deal,  a  good  pair 
of  breeches  will  be  no  inconsiderable  accession  to  my 
appearance, "  the  pair  in  use  being  "not  altogether  well 
adapted  for  a  female  eye. " 

In  due  course,  too,  he  became  a  Grecian,  fell  in  love 
and  wrote  boyish  poetry:  and  both  the  love-making 
and  the  versifying,  though  no  great  matters  at  the  time, 
were  destined  to  have  more  formidable  consequences 
than  usually  attach  themselves  to  youthful  experiments. 
The  young  lady  who  inspired  them  was  a  Miss  Mary 
Evans,  a  widow's  daughter,  and  sister  of  a  small  Blue- 
coat  boy  whom  Coleridge  had  protected. 

And  oh!  from  sixteen  to  nineteen  what  hours  of  paradise 
had  Allen  [a  schoolfellow]  and  I  in  escorting  the  Miss  Evanses 
home  on  a  Saturday,  who  were  then  at  a  milliner's  .  .  . 
and  we  used  to  carry  thither,  of  a  summer  morning,  the 
pillage  of  the  flower-gardens  within  six  miles  of  town,  with 
sonnet  or  love-rhyme  wrapped  round  the  nosegay. 

But  not  all  the  inspiration  came  from  Miss  Evans. 
That  of  the  love-making  she  shared,  if  a  Christ's 


216  Studies  in  Literature 

Hospital  tradition  be  true,  with  the  daughter  of  the 
school  "nurse";  to  whom  the  poem  Genevieve  was 
addressed.  ("For  the  head  boys  to  be  in  love  with 
these  young  persons  was  an  institution  of  long  standing, " 
says  Mr.  Dykes  Campbell.)  That  of  Coleridge's  poetic 
awakening  she  undoubtedly  shared  with  the  Rev. 
William  Lisle  Bowles,  as  we  learn  from  Chapter 'I  of 
Biographia  Literaria.  Critic  after  critic  has  found  oc- 
casion for  wonder  in  this ;  though  in  truth  there  is  none 
at  all.  To  begin  with,  Bowles's  sonnets  are  by  no 
means  bad;  and,  moreover,  even  today  they  are  percepti- 
bly, if  palely,  tinged  with  the  dawn  that  was  breaking 
over  English  poetry.  Doubtless,  had  the  book  which 
fell  into  his  hands  as  he  was  entering  his  seventeenth 
year  been  a  volume  of  Blake,  or  of  Cowper,  or  of  Burns, 
his  young  conversion  would  have  been  more  striking; 
would,  at  any  rate,  have  made  a  better  story.  But  by 
1790  or  thereabouts  the  new  poetic  movement  was  "in 
the  air, "  as  we  say:  a  youth  might  take  infection  from 
any  one,  nor  did  it  greatly  matter  from  whom.  Had 
Coleridge  derived  it  from  a  stronger  source  the  results 
might  have  been  more  precipitate,  more  violent.  As  it 
was,  the  blameless  Sonnets — these  and  the  equally 
blameless  society  of  the  Evans  girls — weaned  him  from 
metaphysics  and  theology,  on  which  he  was  immaturely 
feeding,  and  weaned  him  gently.  He  swore  assent  to 
Bowles:  Bowles  "did  his  heart  more  good"  than  all 
other  books  "excepting  the  Bible":  but  in  his  own 
attempts  at  versifying  he  still  observed,  even  timidly, 
the  conventions. 

In  January,  1791,  the  Committee  of  Almoners  of 
Christ's  Hospital  emancipated  him,  with  an  Exhibition, 
to  Jesus  College,  Cambridge.  He  started  well.  In 
1792  he  gained  the  Browne  Gold  Medal  for  a  Sapphic 


Coleridge  217 

Ode  on  the  Slave  Trade,  and  barely  missed  (on  Person's 
selection)  the  Craven  Scholarship.  In  November,  1793, 
he  bolted  from  Cambridge,  in  a  fright  of  his  college 
debts,  or  in  a  wild  fit  following  on  Mary  Evans's  rejec- 
tion of  his  addresses.  Both  causes  are  suspected,  and 
the  two  may  have  acted  in  combination.  At  all  events 
he  found  his  way  to  London,  and  on  the  second  of 
December  enlisted  in  the  I5th  or  King's  Light  Dragoons, 
sinking  all  but  his  initials  and  his  unlikeness  to  other 
men  in  the  alias  of  Silas  Tomkyn  Comberbacke.  Prob- 
ably a  worse  light  dragoon — he  was  short  of  stature, 
fat,  and  unwieldy — never  occupied,  or  failed  to  occupy, 
a  saddle.  In  April,  1794,  his  relatives  procured  his 
discharge,  and  Jesus  College  readmitted  him.  In  June 
he  visited  his  old  schoolfellow  Allen  at  Oxford,  and 
there  became  acquainted  with  Robert  Southey  of 
Balliol.  Mr.  Robert  Southey  was  then  a  youth  of  ' '  vio- 
lent principles,"  out  of  which — his  friends  and  Cole- 
ridge aiding — the  famous  scheme  of  Pantisocracy  was 
hastily  incubated.  Mr.  Campbell  summarises  it  thus: 

"Twelve  gentlemen  of  good  education  and  liberal  prin- 
ciples are  to  embark  with  twelve  ladies  in  April  next," 
fixing  themselves  in  some  "delightful  part  of  the  new  back 
settlements  of  America. "  The  labour  of  each  man  for  two 
or  three  hours  a  day,  it  was  imagined,  would  suffice  to  sup- 
port the  colony.  The  produce  was  to  be  common  property, 
there  was  to  be  a  good  library,  and  ample  leisure  was  to  be 
devoted  to  study,  discussion,  and  the  education  of  the 
children  on  a  settled  system.  The  women  were  to  be 
employed  in  taking  care  of  the  infant  children  and  in  other 
suitable  occupations,  not  neglecting  the  cultivation  of  their 
minds.  Among  other  matters  not  yet  determined  was 
"whether  the  marriage  contract  shall  be  dissolved,  if  agree- 
able to  one  or  both  parties. "  Every  one  was  "to  enjoy  his 


218  Studies  in  Literature 

own  religious  and  political  opinions,  provided  they  do  not 
encroach  on  the  rules  previously  made. "  "They  calculate 
that  every  gentleman  providing  £125  will  be  sufficient  to 
carry  the  scheme  into  execution." 

While  Pantisocracy  was  hatching,  Coleridge  had 
departed  on  a  walking-tour  in  Wales.  On  the  thir- 
teenth of  July  he  reached  Wrexham,  and  there,  standing 
at  the  inn-window,  he  spied  Mary  Evans  coming  down 
the  street  with  her  sister.  "I  sickened,"  he  writes, 
"and  well-nigh  fainted,  but  instantly  retired."  The 
two  sisters,  it  appears,  had  caught  sight  of  him.  They 
"walked  by  the  window  four  or  five  times,  as  if  anx- 
iously. "  But  the  meeting,  the  possible  reconcilement, 
were  not  to  be.  Coleridge  fled  to  Bristol,  joined  his 
friend  Southey  there,  with  other  Pantisocrats,  includ- 
ing a  family  of  young  ladies  named  Pricker.  Southey 
married  Edith  Pricker.  Coleridge — such  things  hap- 
pen in  the  revulsion  of  disappointed  passion — married 
Sara  Pricker.  The  marriage,  says  Mr.  Campbell,  was 
not  made  in  Heaven.  It  was  in  great  measure  brought 
about  by  Southey. 

Heaven  alone  knows — but  no  one  who  loves  Cole- 
ridge can  help  wistfully  guessing — what  Dorothy  Words- 
worth might  have  made  of  him,  as  his  wife.  We  have, 
perhaps,  no  right  to  guess  at  these  things,  but  we  can- 
not help  it.  He  met  her  too  late,  by  a  little  while,  as  it 
was  all  but  too  late  that  he  met  William  Wordsworth. 
The  Coleridges,  after  a  brief  experience  of  house-keeping 
at  Clevedon  and  Bristol — interrupted  by  a  tour  to  col- 
lect subscriptions  for  a  projected  newspaper,  The  Watch- 
man— hied  them  down  with  their  first-born  to  Nether 
Stowey  in  Somerset,  to  be  neighbours  of  Thomas  Poole, 
an  admiring  friend  and  a  good  fellow.  To  Nether 


Coleridge  219 

Stowey,  in  July,  1797,  came  Wordsworth  and  his 
"exquisite  sister, "  and  were  joined  by  Charles  Lamb — 
all  three  as  the  Coleridges'  guests.  (The  visit  is  com- 
memorated in  This  Lime-tree  Bower  my  Prison.)  At 
the  end  of  his  week's  holiday  Lamb  returned  to  London ; 
the  Wordsworths,  charmed  by  Coleridge's  society, 
removed  themselves  but  three  miles  away,  to  Alfoxden, 
and  set  up  house. 

Then  the  miracle  happened.  Coleridge  had  already 
published  a  volume  of  verse  and  brought  it  to  a  second 
edition:  but  it  contained  no  promise  of  what  was  to 
come.  Wordsworth  was  meditating  the  Muse,  if  the 
word  "meditating"  can  be  used  of  a  composition  so 
frantic  as  The  Borderers;  but  that  he  (the  slower  to 
take  fire)  would  within  a  year  be  writing  Tintern 
Abbey  was  a  thing  impossible,  which  nevertheless 
befell.  Brother,  sister,  and  friend — these  three  as 
Coleridge  has  testified — became  one  soul.  "They  saw 
as  much  of  one  another  as  if  the  width  of  a  street,  and 
not  a  pair  of  coombes,  had  separated  their  several 
abodes";  and  in  the  soul  of  that  intimacy,  under  the 
influence  of  Dorothy — herself  the  silent  one,  content 
to  encourage,  criticise,  admire — wrapped  around  by 
the  lovely  solitudes  of  the  Quantocks — Coleridge  and 
Wordsworth  found  themselves  poets,  speaking  with  new 
voices  in  a  new  dawn.  On  the  thirteenth  of  November, 
at  half -past  four  in  the  afternoon,  the  three  friends  set 
off  to  walk  to  Watchet,  on  their  way  to  the  Exmoor 
country,  intending  to  defray  their  expenses  by  the  sale 
of  a  poem  which  the  two  men  were  to  compose  by  the 
way.  Before  the  first  eight  miles  had  been  covered, 
the  plan  of  joint  authorship  had  broken  down,  and 
Coleridge  took  the  poem  into  his  sole  hands.  He 
wrought  at  it  until  the  following  March.  On  the 


22O  Studies  in  Literature 

twenty- third  of  that  month,  writes  Dorothy,  "Cole- 
ridge dined  with  us.  He  brought  his  ballad  [The 
Ancient  Mariner]  finished.  We  walked  with  him  to  the 
Miner's  house.  A  beautiful  evening,  very  starry,  the 
horned  moon. "  We  feel  that  the  stars  were  out  with 
excuse,  to  celebrate  the  birth  of  a  star. 

The  Ancient  Mariner  sets  one  reflecting  that,  after 
all,  the  men  of  the  Middle  Ages  had  much  to  say  for 
themselves,  who  connected  poetry  with  magic,  and 
thought  of  Virgil  as  a  wizard.  As  we  said  just  now,  by 
taking  small  pains  we  can  understand  that  the  sonnets 
of  Bowles — pale,  faded  essays  as  they  appear  to  us — 
wore  a  different  complexion  in  the  sunrise  of  1790. 
But  we  can  ignore  the  time  and  circumstance  of  its  birth, 
ignore  the  theorisings  out  of  which  it  sprang,  ignore 
Wordsworth  and  his  prefaces  and  the  taste  on  which 
they  made  war;  and  still,  after  more  than  a  hundred 
years,  The  Ancient  Mariner  is  the  wild  thing  of  wonder, 
the  captured  star,  which  Coleridge  brought  in  his  hands 
to  Alfoxden  and  showed  to  Dorothy  and  William 
Wordsworth.  Not  in  the  whole  range  of  English 
poetry — not  in  Shakespeare  himself — has  the  lyrical 
genius  of  our  language  spoken  with  such  a  note. 

A  voice  so  thrilling  ne'er  was  heard  .  .  . 
Breaking  the  silence  of  the  seas 
Among  the  farthest  Hebrides. 

Its  music  is  as  effortless  as  its  imagery.  Its  words  do 
not  cumber  it:  exquisite  words  come  to  it,  but  it  uses 
and  straightway  forgets  them.  Not  Shakespeare  him- 
self, unless  by  snatches,  so  sublimated  the  lyrical 
tongue,  or  obtained  effects  so  magical  by  the  barest 
necessary  means.  Take 


Coleridge  22 1 


Or 


The  many  men,  so  beautiful ! 
And  they  all  dead  did  lie. 


The  moving  Moon  went  up  the  sky, 
And  nowhere  did  abide; 
Softly  she  was  going  up, 
And  a  star  or  two  beside. 


Or 


The  body  of  my  brother's  son 
Stood  by  me,  knee  to  knee: 
The  body  and  I  pull'd  at  one  rope, 
But  he  said  nought  to  me. 

Here,  and  throughout,  from  the  picture  of  the  bride 
entering  the  hall  to  that  of  the  home-coming  in  the 
moon-lit  harbour,  every  scene  in  the  procession  belongs 
to  high  romance,  yet  each  is  conjured  up  with  that 
economy  of  touch  we  are  wont  to  call  classical.  We 
forget  almost,  listening  to  the  voice,  that  there  are  such 
things  as  words. 

And  now  'twas  like  all  instruments, 
Now  like  a  lonely  flute; 
And  now  it  is  an  angel's  song, 
That  makes  the  Heavens  be  mute. 

If,  in  criticism,  such  an  epithet  be  pardonable,  we  would 
call  that  voice  seraphic ;  if  such  a  simile,  we  would  liken 
it  to  a  seraph's,  musing,  talking  before  the  gate  of 
Paradise  in  the  dawn. 

Critics,  allowing  the  magic  of  the  poem,  proceed  to 
stultify  the  admission  by  enquiring  why  Coleridge  did 
not  follow  it  up  and  write  others  like  it.  The  question, 
when  foolishness  has  put  it,  can  in  terms  of  foolishness 


222  Studies  in  Literature 

be  readily  answered.  Coleridge  yielded  his  will  to 
opium.  He  had  already  begun  to  contract  the  habit, 
and  he  soon  became  a  man  capable  (in  Hazlitt's  phrase) 
of  doing  anything  which  did  not  present  itself  as  a  duty. 
Once  or  twice,  in  Christabel  and  in  Kubla  Khan,  he 
found  new  and  divine  openings,  but  his  will  could  not 
sustain  the  flight,  and  the  rest  of  the  story  of  him  as  a 
poet  resolves  itself  into  repeated  futile  efforts  to  carry 
Christabel  to  a  conclusion. 

All  this  is  true  enough,  or  at  least  can  be  made  con- 
vincing by  any  one  who  sets  forth  the  story  of  Cole- 
ridge's subsequent  aberrations.  But  before  we  blame 
his  weakness  let  us  ask  ourselves  if  it  be  conceivably 
within  one  man's  measure  to  produce  a  succession  of 
poems  on  the  plane  of  The  Ancient  Mariner;  and,  next, 
if — the  magic  granted,  as  it  must  be  granted — it  would 
not  almost  necessarily  exhaust  a  man.  In  other  words, 
let  us  enquire  if,  in  a  man  who  performed  that  miracle, 
his  failure  to  perform  others  may  not  be  more  charitably 
set  down  to  a  divine  exhaustion  than  charged  upon  his 
frailties.  Surely  by  Christabel  itself  that  question  is 
answered;  and  almost  as  indisputably  by  Kubla  Khan. 
Coleridge  himself  tells  us  that  he  began  Christabel  in 
1797;  that  is,  either  before  or  during  the  composition  of 
The  Ancient  Mariner.  Between  the  conception  of  the 
two  poems  there  was  no  interval  of  opium-taking.  Yet 
who,  studying  Christabel,  can,  after  the  first  two  or 
three  pages  have  been  turned,  believe  that  the  poem 
could  ever  and  by  any  possibility  have  been  finished? 
Coleridge,  no  doubt,  believed  that  it  could:  but  in  his 
struggles  to  finish  it  he  was  fighting  against  stronger 
adversaries  than  opium ;  against  fate  and  a  providence 
under  which,  things  being  what  they  are,  their  conse- 
quences will  be  what  they  will  be. 


Coleridge  223 

The  metre  of  Christabel,  perfectly  handled  by  its 
inventor,  probably  suffers  in  our  ears  by  association 
with  the  jingle  of  Scott,  and  the  vastly  worse  jingle 
of  Byron,  who  borrowed  it  in  turn.  It  has  since  been 
utterly  vulgarised,  and  the  very  lilt  of  it  nowadays 
suggests  The  Mistletoe  Bough,  melodrama,  and  the 
balladry  of  Bow  Bells.  Yet,  and  although  the  sus- 
picion may  be  unworthy,  one  cannot  help  tracing 
something  of  Bow  Bells  back  to  an  origin  in  such  lines 
as 

Why  waxed  Sir  Leoline  so  pale, 
Murmuring  o'er  the  name  again, 
"Lord  Roland  de  Vaux  of  Tryermaine"? 

In  short,  there  are  some  to  whom  Christabel  rings 
false,  painfully  false,  here  and  there,  in  spite  of  its 
witchery.  Yet,  where  it  rings  true,  we  ask,  Was  there 
ever  such  pure  romantic  music? 

Is  the  night  chilly  and  dark? 
The  night  is  chilly,  but  not  dark. 
The  thin  gray  cloud  is  spread  on  high, 
It  covers  but  not  hides  the  sky. 
The  moon  is  behind,  and  at  the  full : 
And  yet  she  looks  both  small  and  dull. 
The  night  is  chill,  the  cloud  is  gray: 
'Tis  a  month  before  the  month  of  May, 
And  the  Spring  comes  slowly  up  this  way. 

Of  Kubla  Kha,n,  even  if  "  a  person  .  .  .  from  Porlock  " 
had  not  interrupted  it,  who  will  contend  that  it  could 
ever  have  been  finished,  or  even  continued  to  any 
length?  It  abides  the  most  entrancing  magical  frag- 
ment in  English  poetry;  more  than  this  it  never  could 
have  been  or  have  hoped  to  be. 


224  Studies  in  Literature 

Some  three  weeks  after  that  starry  evening  on  which 
Coleridge,  his  immortal  ballad  finished,  walked  with 
his  friends,  reciting  it,  we  find  Wordsworth  writing  to 
a  friend  that  he,  too,  has  been  "very  rapidly  adding 
to  his  stock  of  poetry  "  and  that  the  season  is  advancing 
with  strides,  "and  the  country  becomes  almost  every 
day  more  lovely."  The  splendour  of  that  summer  in 
the  Quantocks  has  passed  into  the  history  of  our 
literature.  Coleridge's  best  harvest  was  done;  Words- 
worth's— longer  of  continuance,  yet  brief  in  comparison 
with  its  almost  insufferably  long  aftermath — on  the 
point  of  ripening.  The  brother  and  sister  quitted 
Alfoxden  at  Midsummer.  In  September  Coleridge  met 
them  in  London  and  voyaged  with  them  on  a  happy, 
almost  rollicking,  jaunt  to  Hamburg.  The  Lyrical 
Ballads  had  been  published  a  few  days  before,  Cole- 
ridge contributing  The  Ancient  Mariner  (or,  to  spell 
it  accurately,  The  Rime  of  the  Ancyent  Marinere),  The 
Nightingale,  The  Foster-Mother's  Tale,  and  The  Dungeon. 
The  two  friends  had  launched  their  thunderbolt,  and 
went  off  gaily.  It  was  a  real  thunderbolt,  too;  a  book 
to  which  the  overworked  epithet  "epoch-making"  may 
for  once  in  a  way  be  applied  without  strain  on  the 
truth;  but  for  the  moment  England  took  it  with  her 
habitual  phlegm.  Mrs.  Coleridge  sent  news  that  "the 
Lyrical  Ballads  are  not  liked  at  all  by  any. " 

At  Hamburg,  after  a  few  crowded  days,  the  travellers 
separated — Coleridge  for  Ratzeburg,  intent  on  acquiring 
a  thorough  knowledge  of  German.  He  returned  to 
Nether  Stowey  in  July,  1799,  and  towards  the  close  of 
the  year  met  the  Wordsworths  again  and  toured  with 
them  through  the  Lake  Country.  Thither  in  June, 
1800,  he  wandered  back  to  them  from  London  and 
Stowey.  They  had  installed  themselves  at  Dove 


Coleridge  225 

Cottage,  Grasmere,  and  in  July  the  Coleridges  settled 
at  Greta  Hall,  Keswick,  twelve  miles  away.  Words- 
worth was  not  working  at  the  height  of  his  powers :  but 
to  Coleridge  the  renewed  intimacy  brought  no  secondary 
spring.  For  him  there  was  never  to  be  another  Stowey. 
And  here,  both  fortunately  and  unfortunately,  the  story 
may  break  off:  unfortunately,  because  his  poetic  period 
had  come  to  an  end  (he  had,  he  writes  to  Thelwall,  "for 
ever  renounced  poetry  for  metaphysics,"  and  moreover 
was  beginning  his  long  slavery  to  opium) ;  fortunately, 
because  its  end  releases  us  from  following  him  to  Malta 
and  Bristol,  through  quarrels  and  patchings-up  of  friend- 
ship, through  wanderings,  returns,  vows  and  defections, 
partial  recoveries,  relapses  and  despairs,  to  the  long- 
drawn  sunset  of  his  life  in  the  home  of  the  Gillmans  at 
Highgate. 

Let  two  things  be  noted,  however,  before  we  give 
assent  to  those  who  write  contemptuously  of  Coleridge 
and  his  infirmity.  The  first  is,  that  even  in  the  lowest 
depths  he  still  fought,  and  in  the  end  he  did  emerge 
with  the  victory.  He  had  won  it  at  a  terrible  cost ;  the 
fight  had  killed  a  hundred  splendid  potentialities;  but 
though  scarred,  battered,  enfeebled,  the  man  emerged, 
and  with  his  manhood  still  in  his  hands,  though  they 
trembled  on  the  prize.  Next  let  us,  reading  of  quarrels 
and  misunderstandings  between  him  and  his  friends, 
note  how,  as  time  effaces  the  petty  circumstance  of  each, 
so  the  essential  goodness  of  the  man  shines  through, 
more  and  more  clearly;  how,  in  almost  any  given  quarrel, 
as  the  years  go  on,  we  see  that  after  all  Coleridge  was 
in  the  right.  He  knew  his  weakness:  but  at  least  it 
taught  him  to  be  tender  towards  the  weaknesses  of  his 
fellows,  and  no  man  had  a  better  reason  to  ask  of  his 
sufferings 


226  Studies  in  Literature 

But  wherefore,  wherefore  fall  on  me? 
To  be  beloved  is  all  I  need, 
And  whom  I  love,  I  love  indeed. 

As  this  affectionate  disposition  made  him  all  but  unin- 
telligible to  the  Southeys  and  Hazlitts  of  his  time,  and 
lay  somewhat  outside  the  range  of  self-centred  Words- 
worth, whose  fault  in  friendship  was  that  of  the  Dutch 
in  matters  of  commerce,1  so  the  very  brilliance  of  his 
intellect  too  often  isolated  him  within  the  circle  of  its 
own  light.  But  on  this  Shelley  has  said  the  last  word : 

You  will  see  Coleridge — he  who  sits  obscure 

In  the  exceeding  lustre  and  the  pure 

Intense  irradiation  of  a  mind 

Which,  with  its  own  internal  lightning  blind, 

Flags  wearily  through  darkness  and  despair — 

A  cloud-encircled  meteor  of  the  air, 

A  hooded  eagle  among  blinking  owls. 

In  justice  and  in  decency  we  should  strive  to  imagine 
Coleridge  as  he  impressed  those  who  loved  him  and 
listened  to  him  in  his  great  days  of  promise;  not  the 
Coleridge  of  later  Highgate  days,  the  spent  giant  with 
whose  portrait  Carlyle  made  brutal  play  to  his  own 
ineffaceable  discredit;  nor  even  the  Coleridge  of  1816, 
the  "archangel  a  little  damaged" — as  Lamb,  using  a 
friend's  privilege,  might  be  allowed  to  describe  him  in  a 
letter  to  Wordsworth,  a  friend  of  almost  equal  standing; 
not  these,  but  the  Coleridge  of  whom  the  remembrance 
was  the  abiding  thought  in  Lamb's  mind  and  on  his  lips 

1 "  But  this,  my  dear  sir,  is  a  mistake  to  which  affectionate  natures 
are  too  liable,  though  I  do  not  remember  to  have  ever  seen  it  noticed — 
the  mistaking  those  who  are  desirous  and  well  pleased  to  be  loved  by  you, 
for  those  who  love  you." — Coleridge  to  Allsop,  December  2,  1818.  (The 
reference  is  to  Wordsworth.) 


Coleridge  227 

during  the  brief  while  he  survived  him — "Coleridge  is 
dead."  "His  great  and  dear  spirit  haunts  me.  .  .  . 
Never  saw  I  his  likeness,  nor  probably  the  world  can  see 
again.  I  seem  to  love  the  house  he  died  at  more  passion- 
ately than  when  he  lived.  .  .  .  What  was  his  mansion 
is  consecrated  to  me  a  chapel. "  If  we  must  dwell  at  all 
on  the  later  Coleridge,  let  it  be  in  the  spirit  of  his  own 
most  beautiful  epitaph : 

Stop,  Christian  passer-by! — Stop,  child  of  God, 

And  read  with  gentle  breast.     Beneath  this  sod 

A  poet  lies,  or  that  which  once  seem'd  he. 

0,  lift  one  thought  in  prayer  for  S.  T.  C.; 

That  he  who  many  a  year  with  toil  of  breath 

Found  death  in  life,  may  here  find  life  in  death! 

Mercy  for  praise — to  be  forgiven  for  fame 

He  ask'd,  and  hoped,  through  Christ.     Do  thou  the  same! 

None  the  less,  in  a  world  ever  loath  to  admit  that 
omelets  involve  the  breaking  of  eggs,  men  will  go  on 
surmising  what  might  have  been,  what  full  treasures 
of  poetry  Coleridge  might  have  left,  had  he  never  drunk 
opium,  had  he  eschewed  metaphysics,  had  he  married 
Dorothy  Wordsworth,  had  he  taken  a  deal  of  advice 
his  friends  gave  him  in  good  intent  to  rescue  the  Cole- 
ridge which  God  made  (with  their  approval)  and  the 
creature  marred.  "He  lived  until  1834, "  wrote  the  late 
Dr.  Garnett.  ' '  If  every  year  of  his  life  had  yielded  such 
a  harvest  as  1797,  he  would  have  produced  a  greater 
amount  of  high  poetry  than  all  his  contemporaries  put 
together."  Yes,  indeed!  and  Kubla  Khan  has  this  in 
common  with  a  cow's  tail — that  it  only  lacks  length  to 
reach  the  moon.  And  yet,  vain  though  these  specula- 
tions are,  we  do  wrong  to  laugh  at  them,  for  their  protest 
goes  deeper  than  their  reasoning;  and  while  fate 


228  Studies  in  Literature 

tramples  on  things  of  beauty  the  indignant  human 
heart  will  utter  it.  Quis  desiderio  sit  pudor  aut  modus, 
when  a  poet — and  such  a  poet — is  broken  in  his  prime  ? 
On  the  other  hand,  the  question  sometimes  raised — 
whether,  in  the  Quantock  time,  when  the  pair  learnt 
to  be  poets,  Coleridge  owed  more  to  Wordsworth,  or 
Wordsworth  to  Coleridge — is,  as  Sir  Thomas  Browne 
would  say,  puzzling,  but  not  beyond  all  conjecture:  and 
we  raise  it  again  because  we  think  it  usually  receives 
the  wrong  answer.  It  is  usually  argued  that  Coleridge 
received  more  than  he  gave,  because  he  was  the  more 
impressionable.  We  might  oppose  this  with  the  argu- 
ment that  Coleridge  probably  gave  more  than  he 
received,  as  his  presence  and  talk  were  the  more  inspir- 
ing. But  let  us  look  at  a  date  or  two.  In  June,  1797, 
Coleridge  wrote  This  Lime-Tree  Bower  my  Prison,  and 
it  contains  such  lines  as  these : 

Yet  still  the  solitary  humble-bee 

Sings  in  the  bean-flower!     Henceforth  I  shall  know 

That  Nature  ne'er  deserts  the  wise  and  pure  .  .  . 

and 

No  sound  is  dissonant  which  tells  of  Life. 

Frost  at  Midnight  is  dated  February,  1798,  and  it  con- 
tains the  passage  beginning 

Therefore  all  seasons  shall  be  sweet  to  thee.  .  .  . 

The  exquisite  Nightingale  belongs  to  the  summer  of 
1798,  and  it  contains  the  images  of  the  "night-wander- 
ing man, "  of  the  nightingale 

That  crowds,  and  hurries,  and  precipitates 
With  fast  thick  warble  his  delicious  notes  .  .  . 


Coleridge  229 

of  the  other  birds  awake  in  the  bushes  with 
Their  bright,  bright  eyes,  their  eyes  both  bright  and  f  ull  .  .  . 

and  that  most  lovely  picture  of  the  infant  hushing  his 
woe  as  he  gazes  up  at  the  moon  through  the  orchard 
boughs : 

While  his  fair  eyes,  that  swam  with  undropped  tears, 
Did  glitter  in  the  yellow  moonbeam !    Well ! — 
It  is  a  father's  tale.     But  if  that  Heaven 
Should  give  me  life,  his  childhood  shall  grow  up 
Familiar  with  these  songs,  that  with  the  night 
He  may  associate  joy. 

Now  the  first  thing  to  be  noted  of  these  lines,  these 
images,  is  that  they  are  what  we  now  call  Words- 
worthian;  some,  the  very  best  Wordsworthian ;  but  all 
Wordsworthian  with  an  intensity  to  which  (if  we  study 
his  verse  chronologically)  we  find  that  in  1798  Words- 
worth had  never  once  attained — or  once  only,  in  a 
couple  of  lines  of  The  Thorn.  When  Coleridge  wrote 
these  things,  Wordsworth  was  writing  We  are  Seven, 
Goody  Blake,  Simon  Lee,  and  the  rest.  It  was  only 
after,  though  soon  after,  Coleridge  had  written  them 
that  Wordsworth  is  seen  capable  of  such  lines  as 

The  still  sad  music  of  humanity  .  .  . 
or  of 

The  stars  of  midnight  shall  be  dear 
To  her;  and  she  shall  lean  her  ear 
In  many  a  secret  place. 

This  note  Coleridge  might  teach  to  Wordsworth,  as 
Wordsworth  might  improve  on  it  and  make  it  his  own. 


230  Studies  in  Literature 

But  that  other  note — the  lyrical  note  of  The  Ancient 
Mariner — was  incommunicable.  He  bequeathed  it  to 
none,  and  before  him  no  poet  had  approached  it ;  hardly 
even  Shakespeare,  on  the  harp  of  Ariel. 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

I  do  not  hold  up  Joubert  as  a  very  astonishing  and 
powerful  genius,  but  rather  as  a  delightful  and  edifying 
genius.  ...  He  is  the  most  prepossessing  and  convincing 
of  witnesses  to  the  good  of  loving  light.  Because  he  sin- 
cerely loved  light,  and  did  not  prefer  to  it  any  little  private 
darkness  of  his  own,  he  found  light.  .  .  .  And  because  he 
was  full  of  light  he  was  also  full  of  happiness.  .  .  .  His  life 
was  as  charming  as  his  thoughts.  For  certainly  it  is 
natural  that  the  love  of  light,  which  is  already  in  some 
measure  the  possession  of  light,  should  irradiate  and  beatify 
the  whole  life  of  him  who  has  it. 

MANY  a  reader  of  Essays  in  Criticism  must  have 
paused  and  in  thought  transferred  to  Matthew 
Arnold  these  words  of  his  in  praise  of  Joubert,  as  well 
as  the  fine  passage  in  which  he  goes  on  to  ask  What,  in 
literature,  we  mean  by  fame?  Only  two  kinds  of 
authors  (he  tells  us)  are  secure  of  fame :  the  first  being 
the  Homers,  Dantes,  Shakespeares,  "the  great  abiding 
fountains  of  truth, "  whose  praise  is  for  ever  and  ever. 
But  beside  these  sacred  personages  stand  certain  elect 
ones,  less  majestic,  yet  to  be  recognised  as  of  the  same 
family  and  character  with  the  greatest,  "exercising  like 
them  an  immortal  function,  and  like  them  inspiring  a 
permanent  interest. "  The  fame  of  these  also  is  assured. 
"They  will  never,  like  the  Shakespeares,  command  the 
231 


232  Studies  in  Literature 

homage  of  the  multitude ;  but  they  are  safe ;  the  multi- 
tude will  not  trample  them  down." 

To  this  company  Matthew  Arnold  belongs.  We  all 
feel  it,  and  some  of  us  can  give  reasons  for  our  con- 
fidence ;  but  perhaps,  if  all  our  reasons  were  collected, 
the  feeling  would  be  found  to  reach  deeper  into  cer- 
tainty than  any  of  them.  He  was  never  popular,  and 
never  will  be.  Yet  no  one  can  say  that,  although  at  one 
time  he  seemed  to  vie  with  the  public  in  distrusting 
it,  his  poetry  missed  its  mark.  On  the  other  hand, 
while  his  critical  writings  had  swift  and  almost  instan- 
taneous effect  for  good,  the  repute  they  brought  him  was 
moderate  and  largely  made  up  of  misconception.  For 
the  mass  of  his  countrymen  he  came  somehow  to  per- 
sonify a  number  of  things  which  their  minds  vaguely 
associated  with  kid  gloves,  and  by  his  ironical  way  of 
playing  with  the  misconception  he  did  more  than  a  little 
to  confirm  it.  But  in  truth  Arnold  was  a  serious  man 
who  saw  life  as  a  serious  business  and  chiefly  relied,  for 
making  the  best  of  it,  upon  a  serene  common-sense. 
He  had  elegance,  to  be  sure,  and  was  inclined — at  any 
rate,  in  controversy — to  be  conscious  of  it ;  but  it  was 
elegance  of  that  plain  Attic  order  to  which  common- 
sense  gives  the  law  and  almost  the  inspiration.  The 
man  and  the  style  were  one.  Alike  in  his  life  and  his 
writings  he  observed  and  preached  the  golden  mean, 
with  a  mind  which  was  none  the  less  English  and  practi- 
cal if,  in  expressing  it,  he  deliberately  and  almost 
defiantly  avoided  that  emphasis  which  Englishmen  love 
to  a  fault. 

Matthew  Arnold,  eldest  son  of  Dr.  Thomas  Arnold, 
the  famous  Head  Master  of  Rugby,  was  born  on 
Christmas  Eve,  1822,  at  Laleham  on  the  Thames, 
where  his  father  at  that  time  taught  private  pupils. 


Matthew  Arnold  233 

The  child  was  barely  six  years  old  when  the  family 
removed  to  Rugby,  and  at  seven  he  returned  to  Lale- 
ham  to  be  taught  by  his  uncle,  the  Rev.  John  Buckland. 
In  August,  1836,  he  proceeded  to  Winchester,  but  was 
removed  at  the  end  of  a  year  and  entered  Rugby, 
where  he  remained  until  he  went  up  to  Balliol  College, 
Oxford,  in  1841,  with  an  open  scholarship.  He  had 
written  a  prize  poem  at  Rugby — the  subject,  Alaric  at 
Rome;  and  on  this  performance  he  improved  by  taking 
the  Newdigate  in  1843 — the  subject,  Cromwell.  But 
we  need  waste  no  time  on  these  exercises,  which  are  of 
interest  only  to  people  interested  in  such  things.  It  is 
better  worth  noting  that  the  boy  had  been  used  to 
spending  his  holidays,  and  now  spent  a  great  part  of  his 
vacations,  at  Fox  How,  near  Grasmere,  a  house  which 
Dr.  Arnold  had  taken  to  refresh  his  eyes  and  his  spirits 
after  the  monotonous  ridge  and  furrow,  field  and 
hedgerow,  around  Rugby ;  and  that,  as  Mr.  Herbert  Paul 
puts  it,  young  Matthew  "thus  grew  up  under  the 
shadow  of  Wordsworth,  whose  brilliant  and  penetrat- 
ing interpreter  he  was  destined  to  become."  Genius 
collects  early,  and  afterwards  distils  from  recollection; 
and  if  its  spirit,  like  that  of  the  licentiate  Pedro  Garcias, 
is  to  be  disinterred,  he  who  would  find  Matthew  Arnold's 
must  dig  in  and  around  Fox  How  and  Oxford. 

At  Oxford,  which  he  loved  passionately,  he  "missed 
his  first, "  but  atoned  for  this,  three  months  later,  by 
winning  a  fellowship  at  Oriel.  (This  was  in  1844-5. 
His  father  had  died  in  1842.)  He  stayed  up,  however, 
but  a  short  while  after  taking  his  degree :  went  back  to 
Rugby  as  an  assistant  master;  relinquished  this  in  1847 
to  become  private  secretary  to  Lord  Lansdowne,  then 
President  of  the  Council;  and  was  by  him  appointed  in 
1851  to  an  Inspectorship  of  Schools,  which  he  retained 


234  Studies  in  Literature 

for  five-and-thirty  years.  In  1851,  too,  he  married 
Frances  Lucy  Wightman,  daughter  of  a  Judge  of  the 
Queen's  Bench;  and  so  settled  down  at  the  same  time 
to  domestic  happiness  and  to  daily  work  which,  if  dull 
sometimes,  was  not  altogether  ungrateful  as  it  was 
never  less  than  conscientiously  performed. 

Meanwhile,  in  1849,  he  had  put  forth  a  thin  volume, 
The  Strayed  Reveller,  and  other  Poems,  by  A;  which  was 
followed  in  1852  by  Empedocles  on  Etna,  and  other 
Poems,  by  A.  In  1853  he  dropped  anonymity  and 
under  the  title  Poems,  by  Matthew  Arnold  republished 
the  contents  of  these  two  volumes,  omitting  Empedocles, 
with  a  few  minor  pieces,  and  adding  some  priceless 
things,  such  as  Sohrab  and  Rustum,  The  Church  oj 
Brou,  Requiescat,  and  The  Scholar -Gipsy. 

"It  was  received,  we  believe,  with  general  indiffer- 
ence," wrote  Mr.  Froude  of  the  first  volume,  in  The 
Westminster  Review,  1854.  We  need  not  trouble  to 
explain  the  fact,  beyond  saying  that  English  criticism 
was  just  then  at  about  the  lowest  ebb  it  reached  in 
the  last  century,  and  that  the  few  capable  ears  were 
occupied  by  the  far  more  confident  voice  of  Tennyson 
and  the  far  more  disconcerting  one  of  Browning:  but 
the  fact — surprising  when  all  allowance  has  been  made 
— must  be  noted,  for  it  is  important  to  remember  that 
the  most  and  best  of  Arnold's  poetry  was  written 
before  he  gained  the  world's  ear,  and  that  he  gained 
it  not  as  a  poet  but  as  a  critic.  In  1855  appeared 
Poems  by  Matthew  Arnold,  Second  Series,  of  which  only 
Balder  Dead  and  Separation  were  new;  and  in  1858 
Merope  with  its  Preface:  but  in  the  interval  between 
them  he  had  been  elected  Professor  of  Poetry  at  Oxford 
(May  1857). 

The  steps  by  which  a  reputation  grows,  the  precise 


Matthew  Arnold  235 

moment  at  which  it  becomes  established,  are  often  diffi- 
cult to  trace  and  fix.  The  poems,  negligently  though 
they  had  been  received  at  first,  must  have  helped :  and, 
since  men  who  improve  an  office  are  themselves  usually 
improved  by  it,  assuredly  the  professorship  helped  too. 
The  lectures  on  Homer  which  adorned  Arnold's  first 
tenure  of  the  Chair  strike  a  new  note  of  criticism,  speak 
with  a  growing  undertone  of  authority  beneath  their 
modest  professions,  and  would  suffice  to  explain — if 
mere  custom  did  not  even  more  easily  explain — why  in 
1862  he  was  re-elected  for  another  five  years.  But 
before  1865,  no  doubt,  the  judicious  who  knew  him  had 
tested  him  by  more  than  his  lectures,  and  were  pre- 
pared for  Essays  in  Criticism. 

Although  we  are  mainly  concerned  here  with  the 
poems,  a  word  must  be  said  on  Essays  in  Criticism, 
which  Mr.  Paul  pronounces  to  be  "Mr.  Arnold's  most 
important  work  in  prose,  the  central  book,  so  to  speak, 
of  his  life. "  Mr.  Saintsbury  calls  it  "the  first  full  and 
varied,  and  perhaps  always  the  best,  expression  and 
illustration  of  the  author's  critical  attitude,  the  detailed 
manifesto  and  exemplar  of  the  new  critical  method,  and 
so  one  of  the  epoch-making  books  of  the  later  nine- 
teenth century  in  English" — and  on  this  subject  Mr. 
Saintsbury  has  a  peculiar  right  to  be  heard. 

Now  for  a  book  to  be  "epoch-making"  it  must  bring 
to  its  age  something  which  its  age  conspicuously  lacks : 
and  Essays  in  Criticism  did  this.  No  one  remembering 
what  Dryden  did,  and  Johnson,  and  Coleridge,  and 
Lamb,  and  Hazlitt,  will  pretend  that  Arnold  invented 
English  criticism,  or  that  he  did  well  what  these  men 
had  done  ill.  What  he  did,  and  they  missed  doing,  was 
to  treat  criticism  as  a  deliberate  disinterested  art,  with 
laws  and  methods  of  its  own,  a  proper  temper,  and 


236  Studies  in  Literature 

certain  standards  or  touchstones  of  right  taste  by  which 
the  quality  of  any  writing,  as  literature,  could  be  tested. 
In  other  words  he  introduced  authority  and,  with 
authority,  responsibility,  into  a  business  which  had 
hitherto  been  practised  at  the  best  by  brilliant  noncon- 
formists and  at  the  worst  by  Quarterly  Reviewers, 
who,  taking  for  their  motto  Judex  damnatur  cum  nocens 
absolvitur,  either  forgot  or  never  surmised  that  to  punish 
the  guilty  can  be  but  a  corollary  of  a  higher  obligation — 
to  discover  the  truth.  Nor  can  any  one  now  read  the 
literature  of  that  period  without  a  sense  that  Arnold's 
teaching  was  indispensably  needed  just  then.  A  page 
of  Macaulay  or  of  Carlyle  dazzles  us  with  its  rhetoric ; 
strikes,  arrests,  excites  us  with  a  number  of  things 
tellingly  put  and  in  ways  we  had  scarcely  guessed  to  be 
possible;  but  it  no  longer  convinces.  It  does  not  even 
dispose  us  to  be  convinced,  since  (to  put  it  vulgarly) 
we  feel  that  the  author  "is  not  out  after"  truth;  that 
Macaulay 's  William  III  is  a  figure  dressed  up  and 
adjusted  to  prove  Macaulay's  thesis,  and  that  the 
France  of  Carlyle's  French  Revolution  not  only  never 
existed  but,  had  it  ever  existed,  would  not  be  France. 
Arnold  helping  us,  we  see  these  failures — for  surely  that 
history  is  a  failure  which,  like  Cremorne,  will  not  bear 
the  daylight — to  be  inevitable  in  a  republic  of  letters 
where  laws  are  not  and  wherein  each  author  writes  at 
the  top  of  his  own  bent,  indulging  and  exploiting  his 
personal  eccentricity  to  the  fullest.  It  has  probably 
been  the  salvation  of  our  literature  that  in  the  four- 
teenth century  the  Latin  prevailed  over  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  line  of  its  descent,  and  that  in  the  forming  of  our 
verse  as  well  as  of  our  prose  we  had,  at  the  critical  mo- 
ments, the  literatures  of  Latin  races,  Italian  or  French, 
for  models  and  correctives;  as  it  was  the  misfortune  of 


Matthew  Arnold  237 

the  Victorian  period  before  1865  that  its  men  of  genius 
wrote  with  eyes  turned  inward  upon  themselves,  or,  if 
outward,  upon  that  German  literature  which,  for  all  its 
great  qualities,  must  ever  be  dangerous  to  Englishmen 
because  it  natters  and  encourages  their  special  faults. I 
Of  Arnold  from  1865  onward — of  the  books  in  which 
he  enforced  rather  than  developed  his  critical  method 
(for  all  the  gist  of  it  may  be  found  in  Essays  in  Critic- 
ism]— of  his  incursions  into  the  fields  of  politics  and 
theology — much  might  be  written,  but  it  would  not  be 
germane  to  our  purpose.  New  Poems,  including  Bac- 
chanalia, or  the  New  Age,  Dover  Beach,  and  the  beautiful 
Thyrsis,  appeared  in  1867;  and  thereafter  for  the  last 
twenty  years  of  his  life  he  wrote  very  little  in  verse, 
though  the  fine  Westminster  Abbey  proved  that  the  Muse 
had  not  died  in  him.  He  used  his  hold  upon  the  public 
ear  to  preach  some  sermons  which,  as  a  good  citizen,  he 
thought  the  nation  needed.  In  his  hard-working  official 
life  he  rendered  services  which  those  of  us  who  engage 
in  the  work  of  English  education  are  constantly  and 
gratefully  recognising  in  their  effects;  and  we  still  toil 
in  the  wake  of  his  ideals.  He  retired  in  November, 
1886.  He  died  on  April  15,  1888,  of  heart-failure;  he 
had  gone  to  Liverpool  to  meet  his  eldest  daughter  on  her 
return  from  the  United  States,  and  there,  in  running  to 
catch  a  tram-car,  he  fell  and  died  in  a  moment.  He  was 
sixty-five,  but  in  appearance  carried  his  years  lightly. 
He  looked  and  was,  a  distinguished  and  agreeable 
man.  Of  good  presence  and  fine  manners;  perfect  in 
his  domestic  relations,  genial  in  company  and  radiating 
cheerfulness ;  setting  a  high  aim  to  his  official  work  yet 
ever  conscientious  in  details ;  he  stands  (apart  from  his 

1  That  Matthew  Arnold  himself  over- valued  contemporary  German 
literature  does  not  really  affect  our  argument. 


238  Studies  in  Literature 

literary  achievement)  as  an  example  of  the  Englishman 
at  his  best.  He  cultivated  this  best  deliberately.  His 
daily  note-books  were  filled  with  quotations,  high 
thoughts  characteristically  chosen  and  jotted  down  to 
be  borne  in  mind;  and  some  of  these — such  as  Semper 
aliquid  certi  proponendum  est  and  Ecce  labora  et  noli 
contristari! — recur  again  and  again.  But  the  result 
owed  its  amiability  also  to  that  "timely  relaxation" 
counselled  by  Milton : 

To  measure  life,  learn  them  betimes,  and  know 
Toward  solid  good  what  leads  the  nearest  way; 
For  other  things  mild  Heav'n  a  time  ordains, 
And  disapproves  that  care,  though  wise  in  show, 
That  with  superfluous  burden  loads  the  day, 
And  when  God  sends  a  cheerful  hour,  refrains. 

To  those,  then,  who  tell  us  that  Arnold's  poetic  period 
was  brief,  and  imply  that  it  was  therefore  disappointing, 
we  might  answer  that  this  is  but  testimony  to  the 
perfect  development  of  a  life  which  in  due  season  used 
poetry  and  at  the  due  hour  cast  it  away,  to  proceed  to 
things  more  practical.  But  this  would  be  to  err  almost 
as  deeply  as  those  who  tell  us  that  Arnold,  as  he  him- 
self said  of  Gray,  "  never  spoke  out " — whereas  Arnold 
habitually  spoke  out,  and  now  and  then  even  too  in- 
sistently. Again  it  would  be  a  mistake  for  us  to  apply 
to  him  au  pied  de  la  lettre  the  over-sad  verses : 

Youth  rambles  on  life's  arid  mount, 

And  strikes  the  rock,  and  finds  the  vein, 

And  brings  the  water  from  the  fount, 
The  fount  which  shall  not  flow  again. 

The  man  mature  with  labour  chops 
For  the  bright  stream  a  channel  grand, 


Matthew  Arnold  239 

And  sees  not  that  the  sacred  drops 
Ran  off  and  vanish'd  out  of  hand. 

And  then  the  old  man  totters  nigh, 
And  feebly  rakes  among  the  stones. 

The  mount  is  mute,  the  channel  dry; 
And  down  he  lays  his  weary  bones. 

Yet  it  were  stupid  not  to  recognise  that  here  is  contained 
a  certain  amount  of  general  truth  and  of  truth  particu- 
larly applicable  to  Arnold.  "The  poet,"  Mr.  Saints- 
bury  writes  of  him  (and  it  sums  up  the  matter) ,  "has  in 
him  a  vein,  or,  if  the  metaphor  be  preferred,  a  spring,  of 
the  most  real  and  rarest  poetry.  But  the  vein  is  con- 
stantly broken  by  faults,  and  never  very  thick;  the 
spring  is  intermittent,  and  runs  at  times  by  drops  only. " 
Elsewhere  Mr.  Saintsbury  speaks  of  his  "elaborate 
assumption  of  the  singing-robe,  "  a  phrase  very  happily 
critical.  Arnold  felt — no  man  more  deeply — the  maj- 
esty of  the  poet's  function:  he  solemnly  attired  himself 
to  perform  it :  but  the  singing- robe  was  not  his  daily 
wear.  The  ample  pall  in  which  Tennyson  swept,  his 
life  through,  as  to  the  manner  born;  the  stiff er  skirts 
in  which  Wordsworth  walked  so  complacently;  these 
would  have  intolerably  cumbered  the  man  who  pro- 
tested that  even  the  title  of  Professor  made  him  uneasy. 
Wordsworth  and  Tennyson  were  bards,  authentic  and 
unashamed ;  whereas  in  Arnold,  as  Sir  William  Watson 
has  noted, 

Something  of  worldling  mingled  still 
With  bard  and  sage. 

There  was  never  a  finer  worldling  than  Matthew  Arnold : 
but  the  criticism  is  just. 

The  critics,  while  noting  this,  have  missed  something 


240  Studies  in  Literature 

which  to  us  seems  to  explain  much  in  Arnold's  verse. 
We  said  just  now  that  English  literature  has  been 
fortunate  in  what  it  owes  to  the  Latin  races;  we  may 
add  that  it  has  been  most  fortunate  in  going  to  Italy  for 
instruction  in  its  verse,  to  France  for  instruction  in  its 
prose.  This  will  be  denied  by  no  one  who  has  studied 
Elizabethan  poetry  or  the  prose  of  the  ' '  Augustan  "  age : 
and  as  little  will  any  one  who  has  studied  the  structure 
of  poetry  deny  that  Italy  is  the  natural,  France  the 
unnatural,  school  for  an  English  poet.  The  reason  is 
not  that  we  understand  Italian  better  than  French 
history  and  with  more  sympathy — though  this,  too, 
scarcely  admits  of  dispute;  nor  again  that  the  past  of 
Italy  appeals  to  emotions  of  which  poetry  is  the  con- 
secrated language.  It  lies  in  the  very  structure  and 
play  of  the  language;  so  that  an  Englishman  who  has 
but  learnt  how  to  pronounce  the  Italian  vowels  can  read 
Italian  poetry  passably.  The  accent  comes  to  him  at 
once ;  the  lack  of  accent  in  French  remains  foreign  after 
many  months  of  study.  Now  although  Arnold  was  no 
great  admirer  of  French  poetry  (and  indeed  had  a 
particular  dislike  for  the  Alexandrine),  France  was,  to 
him,  among  modern  nations,  the  heir  of  those  classical 
qualities  which  differentiate  the  Greek  from  the  bar- 
barian, and  his  poetry  seems  ever  to  be  striving  to 
reproduce  the  Greek  note  through  verse  subdued  to  a 
French  flatness  of  tone,  as  though  (to  borrow  a  meta- 
phor from  another  art)  its  secret  lay  in  low  relief.  But 
an  English  poet  fighting  against  emphasis  is  as  a  man 
fighting  water  with  a  broom:  and  an  English  poet, 
striving  to  be  unemphatic,  must  yet  contrive  to  be 
various,  or  he  is  naught.  Successfully  as  he  managed 
his  prose,  when  he  desired  it  to  be  emphatic  Arnold  had, 
in  default  of  our  native  methods  of  emphasis,  to  fall 


Matthew  Arnold  241 

back  upon  that  simple  repetition  which  irritates  so 
many  readers.  In  his  poetry  the  devices  are  yet  more 
clumsy.  We  suppose  that  no  English  poet  before  or 
since  has  so  cruelly  overworked  the  interjection  "Ah!" 
But  far  worse  than  any  number  of  "ah!s"  is  Arnold's 
trick  of  italic  type : 

How  /  bewail  you!  .  .  . 

We  mortal  millions  live  alone  .  .  . 

In  the  rustling  night-air  comes  the  answer 
"Wouldst  thou  be  as  these  are?     Live  as  they  V  .  . 

a  device  almost  unpardonable  in  poetry.  So  when  he 
would  give  us  variety,  as  in  Tristram  and  Iseult,  Arnold 
has  no  better  resource  than  frequent  change  of  metre : 
and  although  every  reader  must  have  felt  the  effect  of 
that  sudden  fine  outburst 

What  voices  are  these  on  the  clear  night-air? 

What  lights  in  the  court — what  steps  on  the  stair?  .  .  . 

yet  some  must  also  have  reflected  that  the  great  masters, 
having  to  tell  a  story,  choose  their  one  metre  and,  having 
chosen,  so  adapt  and  handle  it  that  it  tells  all.  Sohrab 
and  Rustum  indeed  tells  itself  perfectly,  from  its  first 
line  to  its  noble  close.  But  Sohrab  and  Rustum  is,  and 
professes  to  be,  an  episode.  Balder  is  little  more,  and 
most  readers  find  Balder,  in  spite  of  its  fine  passages 
and  general  dignity,  long  enough.  Arnold — let  it  be  re- 
peated— was  not  a  bard;  not  a  Muse-intoxicated  man. 
He  had  not  the  bardic,  the  architectonic,  gift.  "Some- 
thing of  the  worldling  "  in  him  forbade  any  such  fervour 
as,  sustained  day  after  day  for  years,  gave  the  world 
Paradise  Lost,  and  incidentally,  no  doubt,  made  Mil- 


242  Studies  in  Literature 

ton's  daughters  regret  at  times  that  their  father  was  not 
as  ordinary  men. 

Nor  had  Arnold  an  impeccable  ear  for  rhyme  (in  The 
New  Sirens,  for  instance,  he  rhymes  "dawning"  with 
"morning ") :  and  if  we  hesitate  to  follow  the  many  who 
have  doubted  his  ear  for  rhythm,  it  is  not  for  lack  of 
apparently  good  evidence,  but  because  some  of  his 
rhythms  which  used  to  give  us  pause  have  come,  upon 
longer  acquaintance,  to  fascinate  us :  and  the  explana- 
tion may  be,  as  we  have  hinted,  that  they  follow  the 
French  rather  than  the  Italian  use  of  accent,  and  are 
strange  to  us  rather  than  in  themselves  unmusical. 
Certainly  the  critics  who  would  have  us  believe  that 
The  Strayed  Reveller  is  an  unmusical  poem  will  not  at 
this  time  of  day  persuade  us  by  the  process  of  taking 
a  stanza  or  two  and  writing  them  down  in  the  form  of 
prose.  We  could  do  the  same  with  a  dozen  lines  of  The 
Tempest  or  Antony  and  Cleopatra,  were  it  worth  doing; 
and  prove  just  as  much,  or  as  little. 

Something  of  Arnold's  own  theory  of  poetry  may  be 
extracted  from  the  prefaces  of  1853  and  1854.  They 
contain,  like  the  prefaces  of  Dry  den  and  of  Wordsworth, 
much  wisdom ;  but  the  world,  perhaps  even  more  wisely, 
refuses  to  judge  a  poet  by  his  theory,  which  (however 
admirable)  seldom  yields  up  his  secret.  Yet  Arnold 
had  a  considered  view  of  what  the  poet  should  attempt 
and  what  avoid ;  and  that  he  followed  it  would  remain 
certain  although  much  evidence  were  accumulated  to 
prove  that  he  who  denounced  "poetry's  eternal  enemy, 
Caprice, "  could  himself  be,  on  occasion,  capricious.  He 
leaves  the  impression  that  he  wrote  with  difficulty ;  his 
raptures,  though  he  knew  rapture,  are  infrequent.  But 
through  all  his  work  there  runs  a  strain  of  serious 
elevated  thought,  and  on  it  all  there  rests  an  air  of  com- 


Matthew  Arnold  243 

posure  equally  serious  and  elevated — a  trifle  statuesque, 
perhaps,  but  by  no  means  deficient  in  feeling.  No  one 
can  read,  say,  the  closing  lines  of  Mycerinus  and  fail  to 
perceive  these  qualities.  No  one  can  read  any  con- 
siderable portion  of  his  work  and  deny  that  they  are 
characteristic.  Nor,  we  think,  can  any  one  study  the 
poetry  of  1850  and  thereabouts  without  being  forced  to 
admit  that  it  needed  these  qualities  of  thoughtfulness 
and  composure  which  Arnold  brought  to  it.  He  has 
been  criticised  for  discovering  in  Tennyson  a  certain 
"deficiency  in  intellectual  power."  But  is  he  by  this 
time  alone  in  that  discovery  ?  And  if  no  lack  of  thought- 
fulness  can  be  charged  against  Browning — as  it  cannot — 
is  not  Browning  violent,  unchastened,  far  too  often  ener- 
getic for  energy's  sake?  Be  it  granted  that  Arnold  in 
poetical  strength  was  no  match  for  these  champions: 
yet  he  brought  to  literature,  and  in  a  happy  hour,  that 
which  they  lacked,  insisting  by  the  example  of  his  verse, 
as  well  as  by  the  precepts  of  his  criticism,  that  before  any- 
thing becomes  literature  it  must  observe  two  conditions — • 
it  must  be  worth  saying,  and  it  must  be  worthily  written. 
Also  he  continued,  if  with  a  difference,  that  noble 
Wordsworthian  tradition  which  stood  in  some  danger  of 
perishing — chiefly,  we  think,  beneath  the  accumulation 
of  rubbish  piled  upon  it  by  its  own  author  during  his 
later  years.  That  which  Matthew  Arnold  disinterred 
and  re-polished  may  have  been  but  a  fragment.  His 
page  has  not,  says  Mr.  Watson,  "the  deep,  authentic 
mountain-thrill. "  We  grant  that  Arnold's  feeling  for 
Nature  has  not  the  Wordsworthian  depth:  but  so  far 
as  it  penetrates  it  is  genuine.  Lines  such  as 

While  the  deep-burnish 'd  foliage  overhead 
Splintered  the  silver  arrows  of  the  moon  .  .  . 


244  Studies  in  Literature 

may  owe  their  felicity  to  phrase  rather  than  to  feeling. 
The  Mediterranean  landscape  in  A  Southern  Night  may 
seem  almost  too  exquisitely  elaborated.  Yet  who  can 
think  of  Arnold's  poetry  as  a  whole  without  feeling 
that  Nature  is  always  behind  it  as  a  living  background? 
— whether  it  be  the  storm  of  wind  and  rain  shaking 
Tintagel— 

I  forgot,  thou  comest  from  thy  voyage — 
Yes,  the  spray  is  on  thy  cloak  and  hair  .  .  . 

or  the  scent-laden  water-meadows  along  the  Thames,  or 
the  pine  forests  on  the  flank  of  Etna,  or  an  English  garden 
in  June,  or  Oxus,  its  mists  and  fens  and  "the  hush'd 
Chorasmian  waste. "  If  Arnold's  love  of  natural  beauty 
have  not  those  moments  of  piercing  apprehension  which 
in  his  master's  poetry  seem  to  break  through  dullness 
into  the  very  heaven :  if  he  have  not  that  secret  which 
Wordsworth  must  have  learnt  upon  the  Cumbrian 
mountains,  from  moments  when  the  clouds  drift  apart 
and  the  surprised  climber  sees  all  Windermere,  all 
Derwentwater,  shining  at  his  feet ;  if  on  the  other  hand 
his  philosophy  of  life,  rounded  and  complete,  seem  none 
too  hopeful,  but  call  man  back  from  eager  speculations 
which  man  will  never  resign :  if  it  repress,  where  Brown- 
ing encouraged,  our  quest  after 

Thoughts  hardly  to  be  pack'd 

Within  the  narrow  act, 

Fancies  that  broke  through  language  and  escaped  .  .  . 

yet  his  sense  of  atmosphere,  of  background,  of  the  great 
stage  on  which  man  plays  his  part,  gives  Arnold's 
teaching  a  wonderful  comprehension,  within  its  range. 
"This,"  we  say,  "is poetry  we  can  trust,  not  to  flatter 
us,  but  to  sustain,  console."  If  the  reader  mistake  it 


Matthew  Arnold  245 

for  the  last  word  on  life  his  trust  in  it  will  be  illusory. 
It  brings  rather  that 

lull  in  the  hot  race 
Wherein  he  doth  for  ever  chase 
That  flying  and  elusive  shadow,  rest. 
An  air  of  coolness  plays  upon  his  face, 
And  an  unwonted  calm  pervades  his  breast; 
And  then  .  .  . 

(if  after  protesting  against  italics  in  poetry  we  may  itali- 
cise where,  for  once,  Arnold  missed  the  opportunity) 

he  thinks  he  knows 
The  hills  where  his  life  rose, 
And  the  sea  where  it  goes. 


SWINBURNE 

I 

How  were  the  roses  so  fresh  and  so  fair  I 

I  do  not  suppose  that  anybody  now  alive  (I  speak  of 
lovers  of  poetry)  who  was  not  alive  in  1832  and  old  enough 
then  to  enjoy  the  first  perfect  work  of  Tennyson,  has  had 
such  a  sensation  as  that  which  was  experienced  in  the 
autumn  of  1866  by  readers  of  Mr.  Swinburne's  Poems  and 
Ballads.  And  I  am  sure  that  no  one  in  England  has  had  any 
such  sensation  since. 

'T'HUS  wrote  Mr.  George  Saintsbury,  some  twenty- 
^  two  years  ago,  in  a  volume  called  Corrected  Impres- 
sions: and  it  is  certain  that  no  one  survives  today  to 
compare  the  emotional  experiences  of  1832  and  1866, 
to  report  to  us.  Indeed  of  the  men  who  in  1866  were 
old  enough  to  wage  war  over  Poems  and  Ballads  the 
greater  number  pre-deceased  its  author,  and  by  this 
time  a  very  few  remain.  Mr.  Saintsbury,  who  happily 
survives  (but  will  not  be  called  "Doctor"),  was  an 
under-graduate  in  1866.  He  tells  us: 

The  autumn  must  have  been  advanced  before  [the  book] 
did  come  out,  for  I  remember  that  I  could  not  obtain  a  copy 
before  I  went  up  to  Oxford  in  October,  and  had  to  avail 
myself  of  an  expedition  to  town  to  "  eat  dinners  "  in  order  to 
get  one.  Three  copies  of  the  precious  volume,  with  "  Mox- 
246 


Swinburne  247 

on"  on  cover  and  "John  Camden  Hotten"  on  title-page, 
accompanied  me  back  that  night,  together  with  divers 
maroons  for  the  purpose  of  enlivening  matters  on  the  ensu- 
ing Fifth  of  November.  The  book  was  something  of  a 
maroon  in  itself.  .  .  .  We  sat  next  afternoon,  I  remember, 
from  luncheon  time  till  the  chapel  bell  rang,  reading  aloud 
by  turns  in  a  select  company  Dolores  and  The  Triumph  of 
Time,  Laus  Veneris  and  Faustine,  and  all  the  other  wonders 
of  the  volume. 

The  hubbub  raised  over  Poems  and  Ballads  in  1866 
still,  after  half  a  century,  interrupts  criticism  with  an 
echo  too  loud  for  its  real  importance,  even  for  its  his- 
torical importance.  It  was  not,  to  be  sure,  a  mere  hubbub 
of  the  market-place,  and  for  much  of  it  that  sounded  in 
the  market-place,  Swinburne  and  his  friends  were  largely 
to  blame.  The  Pre-Raphaelites  had  a  tribal  way  of 
shouting  their  wares  before  producing  them.  In  Goblin 
Market  "Come  buy!  Come  buy!"  habitually  dinned  as 
noisily  as  in  any  vulgar  one,  and  Alexander  the  copper- 
smith could  colourably  plead,  nine  times  out  of  ten,  that 
he  had  not  started  the  tumult.  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti 
in  particular  had  always  a  nervous  sense  of  the  public 
opinion  it  was  proposed  to  offend ;  his  own  poems  ap- 
peared in  circumstances  (creditable  enough  if  hidden) 
which,  made  public,  to  an  uncharitable  world  suggested 
reclame.  There  can  be  no  doubt,  we  think  (after  read- 
ing many  Memoirs) ,  that  his  friends  did  Swinburne  little 
service  together  with  much  disservice  by  puffing  his 
book  beforehand.  "Now  we  were  told,  first,  that  a 
volume  of  extraordinarily  original  verse  was  coming 
out;  now,  that  it  was  so  shocking  that  its  publisher 
repented  its  appearance ;  now,  that  it  had  been  re-issued, 
and  was  coming  out  after  all."  Nor  can  it  be  said  that, 
when  the  storm  burst,  Swinburne  either  handled  his 


248  Studies  in  Literature 

craft  or  comported  himself  in  a  way  to  make  easy 
weather.  The  book  did  challenge  the  world:  it  did 
contain  matter  of  offence — and  he  well  knew  it.  When 
we  have  allowed  everything  for  the  sensitiveness  of  a 
poet,  it  remains  true  that  a  man  who  throws  down  a 
challenge  should  be  prepared  to  keep  his  head  when  the 
glove  is  taken  up. 

But  the  real  marvel  of  Poems  and  Ballads  lay,  of 
course,  in  its  poetry,  as  in  that  lay  the  real  innovation. 
Other  poets  had  been  scandalous — plenty  of  them — • 
before  Swinburne;  and  the  possible  changes  that  true 
poetry  can  ring  on  the  libidinous  are,  after  all,  pretty 
few.  But  here  was  a  man  who,  five  hundred  years  after 
Chaucer,  in  the  long  line  of  descent  which  already 
boasted  Shakespeare,  Milton,  Dryden,  Pope,  Words- 
worth, Shelley,  Byron,  Tennyson,  Browning — all  so 
great  and  all  so  different — had  suddenly  discovered  a 
new  door  and  thrust  it  open  upon  what  seemed  endless 
vistas  of  beauty.  Here  was  a  man  who,  coming  after 
these  mighty  inventors,  could  take  the  language  in 
which  they  had  wrought,  and  convert  it  to  a  music  as 
unlike  any  of  theirs,  as  absolutely  fresh  and  original,  as 
it  was  patently  the  music  of  a  peer.  Swinburne  con- 
stantly held  that  all  great  poets  must  be  conscious 
of  their  greatness.  He  himself  could  be  as  arrogant 
as  any  one,  when  provoked ;  but  although  self-centred, 
he  was  too  noble  a  gentleman  to  be  arrogant  by  habit — 
he  was  even  over-prone  to  abase  himself  before  the 
greater  gods  of  Parnassus :  and  in  the  following  anecdote 
he  is  made  to  assert  a  claim  which  many  will  think  not 
overweening. 

He  was  not  disinclined,  on  occasion,  to  refer  to  himself 
with  an  engaging  frankness,  as  if  he  were  speaking  of  some- 


Swinburne  249 

one  else.  At  Jowett's  dinner-table  R.  W.  Raper  once  asked 
him  which  of  the  English  poets  had  the  best  ear.  Swinburne 
replied  with  earnestness  and  gravity:  " Shakespeare  without 
doubt;  then  Milton;  then  Shelley;  then,  I  do  not  know  what 
other  people  would  do,  but  I  should  put  myself. " 

Although  our  memory  reach  short  of  Mr.  Saintsbury's, 
we  can  bring  a  small  illustration  of  the  sway  this  genius 
held  over  young  men  in  1880.  The  wave  of  enthusiasm 
had  fallen  into  a  trough  with  Bothwell.  The  splendid 
choruses  in  Erechtheus  had  lifted  it  a  little;  but  Erech- 
theus  as  a  whole  failed  to  "amuse,"  and  the  worshippers 
had  an  uneasy  sense  that  their  master  was  fumbling  in 
an  art  for  which  he  lacked  instinct  as  well  as  tact ;  that, 
when  prolixity  should  have  warned  him  as  the  surest 
signal  of  a  mark  missed,  Swinburne  had  not  even  the 
eyes  to  see  that  his  prolixity  was  prolix.  But  in  1878, 
with  Poems  and  Ballads,  Second  Series,  on  the  wonderful 
crests  of  such  lyrics  as  The  Year  of  the  Rose,  A  Forsaken 
Garden,  A  Wasted  Vigil,  and  the  supreme  A  veatque  Vale, 
the  wave  surged  up  anew  to  its  summit :  and  if  we  missed 
the  adventurous  feeling  of  naughtiness,  that  too  was 
restored  to  us,  after  a  fashion,  in  1880,  by  Heptalogia — 
for  youth  loves  parodies,  and  to  see  fun  poked  at  ponti- 
fical seniors.  Memory  recalls  a  night  in  the  autumn  of 
that  year,  a  set  of  rooms  in  Balliol — but  men  dropped  in 
from  other  colleges  and  stayed  until  close  upon  midnight 
— a  voice  chanting  the  Heptalogia  to  wild  shouts  of 
laughter,  the  company  taking  fire  and  running  back, 
like  flame  over  stubble,  to  race  through  the  audacities 
of  Poems  and  Ballads  even  back  to  the  Circean  choruses 
of  Atalanta — ' '  hounds  of  spring  on  winter's  traces  " : 

And  Pan  by  noon  and  Bacchus  by  night, 
Fleeter  of  foot  than  the  fleet-foot  kid, 


250  Studies  in  Literature 

Follows  with  dancing  and  fills  with  delight 

The  Maenad  and  the  Bassarid ; 
And  soft  as  lips  that  laugh  and  hide 
The  laughing  leaves  of  the  trees  divide, 
And  screen  from  seeing  and  leave  in  sight 

The  god  pursuing,  the  maiden  hid. 

And  then,  almost  suddenly — even  in  breasts  that  con- 
tinued to  echo  the  memory  of  it — all  this  enthusiasm 
had  died  down ;  and  while  Swinburne  went  on  writing, 
writing  of  stars  and  love,  and  waves  and  flames  that 
were  deathless  or  breathless  or  tattered  or  battered  or 
shattered,  none  of  them  mattered,  none  of  them  con- 
tained any  longer  any  hope;  all  were  galvanic — reflex 
action  of  genius  after  death. 

That  is  the  real  tragedy  which  has  to  be  explained  in 
the  biography  of  a  man  whose  life  yields  the  picturesque 
biographer  very  little — or  very  little  that  can  be  told — 
of  incident  for  escape  or  resource.  It  would  still  be  the 
real  tragedy  and  kernel  of  the  whole  matter  had  Swin- 
burne's life  been  crowded  with  spirited  actual  adventure. 
Swinburne  was  a  tremendous  force  in  poetry :  the  force 
died;  the  man  outlived  it,  and  died,  many  years  later, 
solicitously  tended.  He  had  in  his  day  the  hearts  of  all 
young  lovers  of  poetry  at  his  feet.  He  has  left  an  in- 
delible mark  on  English  verse:  and  for  this,  to  the  end, 
the  younger  generation  venerated  him  as  a  great  figure, 
a  spent  god  and  asleep  under  the  pines  (Putney) .  He 
was  the  last  man  in  the  world  to  leave  a  cause  for  a  rib- 
bon or  a  handful  of  silver.  But  he  who  had  inspired 
parodists  innumerable  and  many  pale  imitators,  has 
left  us  no  school  of  poets.  Upon  the  literature  of 
Victorian  England  he  made  an  amazing  irruption,  and 
passed. 


Swinburne  251 

II 

It  is  always  a  pleasure  to  read  a  book  by  a  man  who 
knows  how  books  should  be  written,  and  Mr.  Gosse's 
eagerly  awaited  Life  of  Swinburne  tells  the  tale  vividly, 
tactfully,  adequately,  in  that  excellent  prose  which,  al- 
though one  takes  it  for  granted  in  the  author  of  Father 
and  Son,  still  gives  so  much  pleasure  that  it  were  ungrate- 
ful to  omit  the  benedicamus.  Moreover  the  tale  not  only 
gives  truth  of  fact,  so  far  as  our  knowledge  enables  us 
to  test  this,  but  by  nicely  apportioning  the  whole  to  its 
subject,  and  its  casual  with  its  more  significant  and  im- 
portant parts,  conveys  an  impression  of  truth  scarcely 
less  valuable.  It  omits,  to  be  sure,  the  one  word  (of  five 
letters)  which,  if  uttered,  might  have  saved  the  skilful 
artist  a  deal  of  trouble ;  but  it  does  this  in  obedience  to 
a  tradition  which  makes,  no  doubt,  for  literary  as  well 
as  for  parliamentary  decency ;  and  we  shall  amuse  our- 
selves by  copying  Mr.  Gosse's  reticence. 

The  genius  of  Swinburne  was  something  elvish,  always 
and  throughout.  He  had  all  the  precocity  of  an  elf, 
with  no  little  of  its  outward  guise.  Like  an  elf,  he  never 
grew  up.  Like  an  elf,  he  suddenly  gave  signs  of  arrested 
growth,  was  an  old  man  prematurely,  and  continued  to 
be  an  old  man  for  many  years,  until  the  moment  when 
he  peacefully  faded  out.  There  was  one  reason  which 
in  ordinary  men  would  account  well  enough  for  this 
arrested  development,  but  it  will  not  account  for 
Swinburne. 

Even  his  birth  is  an  elfin  mystery.  Who  could 
predict — who  can  account  for — this  child  as  springing 
from  the  union  of  a  British  Admiral  with  a  daughter 
of  the  third  Earl  of  Ashburnham?  The  ancient  and 
honourable  families  of  Swinburne  and  Ashburnham 


252  Studies  in  Literature 

have  nothing  in  their  records  which  begins  to  explain 
him.  He  himself  has  stated  that  he  was  born  "all  but 
dead,  and  certainly  was  not  expected  to  live  an  hour. " 
Of  this  circumstance  (probably  apocryphal)  exact 
memory  can  hardly  be  demanded  of  him ;  but  again  and 
again  his  most  definite  recollections  of  his  childhood 
(given  in  later  years  in  all  honesty  by  one  who  abhorred 
falsehood  all  his  life)  are  shown  to  be  legendary,  to  say 
the  least — "intimations  of  immortality"  rather  than 
slavish  records  of  fact.  The  fact  of  importance  is 
that  his  childhood  alternated  between  two  homes — his 
parents'  at  East  Dene,  Bonchurch,  in  the  Isle  of  Wight, 
and  Capheaton  on  the  Northumbrian  coast,  where  his 
Border  ancestors  had  settled  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth 
and  where  his  grandfather,  Sir  John  Swinburne,  sixth 
baronet,  kept  house  as  head  of  the  family.  The  seas 
off  the  Wight  to  swim  in — the  Northumbrian  coast  to 
gallop  along,  chanting  verse  against  the  rush  of  the 
wind  in  his  face — chanting  (say)  Gastibelza,  "the  song 
of  songs  which  is  Hugo's" — these,  heaven  to  the  boy's 
childhood,  were  cherished  by  him  to  the  end  as  his 
heavenliest  experiences.  Only  the  coasts  of  Cornwall 
(Tristram's  coast)  and  of  Sark  ever  competed  in  his 
affection  with  Bonchurch  and  Capheaton,  where 

Through  fell  and  moorland, 
And  salt-sea  foreland, 
Our  noisy  norland 

Resounds  and  rings. 

As  he  never  swerved  from  these  first  loyalties  to  place 
and  kindred,  so,  while  pretending  to  grow  up,  he  but 
altered,  without  changing,  the  strange  elvishness  of  his 
personal  appearance.  His  cousin,  Lord  Redesdale,  thus 


Swinburne  253 

describes  his  first  arrival  at  Eton  (in  the  summer  half 
of  1849)  at  the  age  of  twelve: 

What  a  fragile  little  creature  he  seemed  as  he  stood  there 
between  his  father  and  mother,  with  his  wondering  eyes 
fixed  upon  me!  Under  his  arm  he  hugged  his  Bowdler's 
Shakespeare,  a  very  precious  treasure  bound  in  brown  lea- 
ther with,  for  a  marker,  a  narrow  slip  of  ribbon,  blue  I  think, 
with  a  button  of  that  most  heathenish  marqueterie  called 
Tunbridge  ware  dangling  from  the  end  of  it.  He  was 
strangely  tiny.  His  limbs  were  small  and  delicate,  and  his 
sloping  shoulders  looked  far  too  weak  to  carry  his  great 
head,  the  size  of  which  was  exaggerated  by  the  tousled 
mass  of  red  hair  standing  almost  at  right  angles  to  it.  Hero- 
worshippers  talk  of  his  hair  as  having  been  a  "golden 
aureole. "  At  that  time  there  was  nothing  golden  about  it. 
Red,  violent,  aggressive  red  it  was,  unmistakable  red,  like 
burnished  copper.  His  features  were  small  and  beautiful, 
chiselled  as  daintily  as  those  of  some  Greek  sculptor's 
masterpiece.  His  skin  was  very  white — not  unhealthy,  but 
a  transparent  tinted  white,  such  as  one  sees  in  the  petals  of 
some  roses.  His  face  was  the  very  replica  of  that  of  his 
dear  mother,  and  she  was  one  of  the  most  refined  and  lovely 
of  women.  His  red  hair  must  have  come  from  the  Admiral's 
side,  for  I  never  heard  of  a  red-haired  Ashburnham. 

Against  this  for  a  pendant,  let  us  set  Mr.  Gosse's 
description  of  the  mature  man : 

Algernon  Swinburne  was  in  height  five  feet  four  and  a  half 
inches.  He  carried  his  large  head  very  buoyantly  on  a  tiny 
frame,  the  apparent  fragility  of  which  was  exaggerated  by 
the  sloping  of  his  shoulders,  which  gave  him,  almost  into 
middle  life,  a  girlish  look.  He  held  himself  upright,  and,  as 
he  was  very  restless,  he  skipped  as  he  stood,  with  his  hands 
jerking  or  linked  behind  him  while  he  talked,  and,  when  he 
was  still,  one  toe  was  often  pressed  against  the  heel  of  the 
other  foot.  In  this  attitude  his  slenderness  and  slightness 


254  Studies  in  Literature 

gave  him  a  kind  of  fairy  look,  which  I,  for  one,  have  never 
seen  repeated  in  any  other  human  being.  It  recurs  to  my 
memory  as  his  greatest  outward  peculiarity. 

His  head  was  bigger  than  that  of  most  men  of  his  height, 
as  Sir  George  Young  tells  us,  when  he  entered  Eton  at  twelve 
years  old  his  hat  was  already  the  largest  in  the  school. 
Mr.  Lindo  Myers,  who  came  over  with  him  from  Havre  in 
the  autumn  of  1868,  writes  to  me  that,  Swinburne's  hat  hav- 
ing been  blown  overboard,  "when  we  got  to  Southampton, 
we  went  to  three  hatters  before  we  found  one  hat  that 
would  go  on,  and  then  we  had  to  rip  the  lining  out.  His 
head  was  immense."  In  the  late  Putney  days,  when  he 
became  bald,  this  bigness  of  his  head  was  less  noticeable 
than  when  it  had  been  emphasised  by  the  vast  "burning 
bush  "  of  his  red  hair,  which  in  early  days  he  wore  very  much 
fluffed  out  at  the  sides.  .  .  .  The  orb  of  this  mop  reduced 
the  apparent  thickness  of  his  neck,  which,  looked  at  merely 
in  relation  to  his  falling  shoulders,  was  excessive,  yet 
seemed  no  more  than  was  necessary  to  carry  the  balloon  of 
head  and  hair. 

But  we  must  go  back  to  Eton,  where  " Grub  "  Brown, 
the  librarian,  would  point  the  boy  out  to  visitors  as  one 
of  the  sights  of  the  place,  "where  he  sat,  day  after  day, 
in  a  gallery  window  of  the  library  with  a  folio  across  his 
knees."  He  devoured  the  English  poets  at  this  time: 
the  Elizabethan  and  Jacobean  dramatists  with  a  quite 
amazing  voracity.  Years  afterwards,  in  1885,  he  wrote 
that  the  plays  of  Marston  had  dwelt  in  his  memory  since 
"I  first  read  them  at  the  advanced  age  of  twelve " ;  and 
in  1887  that  those  of  so  obscure  a  writer  as  Nabbes  had 
been  familiar  to  him  "ever  since  my  thirteenth  year. " 
Thirty  years  later,  too,  looking  over  his  bookshelves, 
he  took  down  a  copy  of  Lamb's  Specimens  of  the  English 
Dramatic  Poets  and  remarked,  "That  book  taught  me 
more  than  any  other  in  the  world — that  and  the  Bible.' 


Swinburne  255 

There  are  some  of  us  who  hold  (with  all  reverence 
for  Lamb)  that  he — and  Swinburne  after  him — in  their 
enthusiasm  have  exalted  these  obscurer  Elizabethans 
quite  disproportionately  and  out  of  perspective,  dimin- 
ishing for  the  unlearned  or  unwary  reader  the  true 
eminence  of  Shakespeare  above  them  all.  But  we  pass 
this  by:  the  point  for  us,  just  here,  being  that  in  his 
literary  loves,  as  in  almost  everything  else,  this  fay-like 
creature  never  really  grew  up,  never  developed  as  other 
men  develop.  "  It  is  particularly  important  to  notice," 
says  Mr.  Gosse,  "that  almost  all  Swinburne's  literary 
convictions  were  formed  while  he  was  at  school";  and 
later  we  read,  "From  the  earliest  record  of  his  child- 
hood to  that  of  his  last  hours  at  Putney  we  see  him 
unchanged  by  conditions  and  unaffected  by  opinion. 
This  gives  his  career  a  certain  rigidity.  ..."  In  1892, 
when  Tennyson's  death  left  the  laureateship  vacant  and 
Queen  Victoria  is  reported  to  have  said  to  Gladstone, 
"I  am  told  that  Mr.  Swinburne  is  the  best  poet  in  my 
dominions, "  Swinburne  gave  it  as  his  private  conviction 
that  Canon  Dixon,  author  of  Mano,  had  the  highest 
claim  for  the  post,  and,  failing  him,  Lord  De  Tabley. 
"It  will  be  observed,"  Mr.  Gosse  points  out,  "that 
each  of  these  poets  was  older  than  Swinburne,  who  had 
little  knowledge  of  the  verse  of  men  born  after  1850,  and 
even  less  curiosity  about  their  careers."  His  attitude 
to  old  men  of  genius  was  "adorable  in  humility — to 
Victor  Hugo,  to  Landor — even  to  old  men  of  talent, 
such  as  Barry  Cornwall  and  Wells  of  Joseph  and  his 
Brethren  ";  but  he  had  learned  to  worship  them  at  school 
and  each  lived  to  a  ripe  age  to  retain  his  loyalty.  Of 
young  men  he  was  incurious:  which  begins  to  explain 
why  this  innovator  never  founded  a  school. 

It  was  the  same  with  his  politics.     He  sang  of  Italian 


256  Studies  in  Literature 

liberty,  sitting  at  the  feet  of  Mazzini.  Sitting  at  the 
feet  of  Victor  Hugo  he  cursed  Napoleon  III  as  never 
man  cursed  save  his  master.  He  hailed  the  French 
Republic:  to  the  end  he  could  preach  tyrannicide  as  a 
duty,  like  a  schoolboy,  academically  wreathing  his 
sword  in  myrtle  bough.  Yet  again  we  come  back  upon 
ossification,  both  in  hate  and  in  hope. 

When  Napoleon  III  died,  in  pain  and  obscurity,  at  Chisle- 
hurst,  having  ceased  for  three  years  to  be  a  power  for  good 
or  for  evil,  France  partly  forgave  him,  and  even  Victor 
Hugo  forgot  him.  Yet  Swinburne  neither  forgot  nor  for- 
gave, and  to  him  it  seemed  as  just  to  continue  to  execrate 
this  miserable  man  six  months  after  his  death  as  it  had  been 
to  abuse  him  six  months  before  it.  .  .  .  The  essence  of  the 
series  of  sonnet-curses,  Dirae,  was  ecstasy  that  "we  have 
lived  to  say  The  dog  is  dead." 

So  he  could  sing  for  Italian  liberty  like  a  very  Simon- 
ides  ("the  emotion  of  the  poet  .  .  .  gave  to  the  noblest 
parts  of  Songs  before  Sunrise  an  intensity  unique  in 
English  literature,  and  probably  to  be  compared  with 
nothing  else  written  since  the  Greeks  produced  cos- 
mological  hymns  in  the  fifth  century  B.  C. "),  and,  when 
that  liberty  was  won,  could  drop  all  interest  in  Italy  and 
Italy's  future;  as,  after  passionately  acclaiming  the 
French  Republic,  he  averted  his  face  and  took  no  fur- 
ther interest  in  what  happened  to  France.  Yet,  after 
all,  what  worth  is  either  a  new  monarchy  or  a  new 
republic,  save  as  an  instrument  for  furthering  new 
political  hopes? 

Ill 

Having  to  do  with  a  genius  so  precocious  and  so  pre- 
maturely ossified,  we  need  make  no  apology  for  switch- 


Swinburne  257 

ing  from  Eton  to  Putney  and  back.  Mr.  Gosse  opines 
that  at  Eton,  where  his  physical  strangeness  invited  it. 
"he  was  preserved  from  bullying  by  a  certain  dignity 
and  by  his  unquestionable  courage."  His  courage, 
then  and  through  life,  was  beyond  question,  and  indeed 
it  would  be  strange  if  any  scion  of  Swinburne  and  Ash- 
burnham  lacked  that  quality.  Algernon  Swinburne 
possessed  it,  at  all  events.  At  the  age  of  seventeen  he 
entertained  a  boyish  notion  of  attaining  eminence  in 
life  as  a  cavalry  officer,  and  attempted  the  climb  of 
Culver  Cliff  in  the  Isle  of  Wight  (believed  to  be  impreg- 
nable) "as  a  chance  of  testing  my  nerve  in  the  face  of 
death  which  could  not  be  surpassed."  He  performed 
the  feat,  which  had  to  be  confessed  to  his  mother. 

Of  course  she  wanted  to  know  why  I  had  done  such  a  thing 
and  when  I  told  her  she  laughed  a  short,  sweet  laugh  most 
satisfactory  to  the  young  ear,  and  said,  "Nobody  ever 
thought  you  were  a  coward,  my  boy."  I  said  that  was  all 
very  well,  but  how  could  I  tell  till  I  tried?  "But  you  won't 
do  it  again?"  she  said.  I  replied,  "Of  course  not — where 
would  be  the  fun?" 

As  a  swimmer  he  was  intrepid,  and  his  rashness  twice 
brought  him  near  to  drowning;  but  on  each  occasion  he 
saved  himself,  having  no  great  strength  of  stroke,  by  his 
indomitable  persistence.  When  he  was  an  elderly  man, 
some  hulking  poetaster,  half -mad  with  vanity,  who  had 
sought  in  vain  to  drag  Swinburne  into  a  correspondence, 
waylaid  him  with  a  big  stick  on  one  of  his  lonely  walks. 
"The  antagonist  was  a  powerful  man,  his  victim  a  sort 
of  fairy;  but  Swinburne  cowed  him  by  sheer  personal 
dignity  and  serenely  continued  to  walk  on,  with  the 
blusterer  growling  behind  him."  Theodore  Watts- 
Dunton  was  alarmed,  and  took  out  a  warrant  against 


258  Studies  in  Literature 

the  man  (had  it  been  legally  possible  he  would  have 
done  better  to  take  out  a  warrant  against  a  few  London 
street-crossings,  through  the  murderous  traffic  of  which 
Swinburne  would  plunge  and  dance,  heedless  as  a  child, 
having  a  charmed  life) .  Swinburne  merely  laughed  at 
the  affair :  he  did  not  even  copy  Dr.  Johnson's  procedure 
(with  Macpherson)  and  write  a  letter  to  the  bully — 
which  was  just  as  well,  perhaps,  for  we  very  much 
doubt  if  the  serenity  shown  during  the  actual  incident 
would  have  translated  itself  in  ink  upon  paper. 

In  spite,  however,  of  his  constant  and  unquestioned 
courage,  evidence  could  be  collected,  we  fear,  that 
Swinburne  did  suffer  bullying  at  Eton.  The  late  Vis- 
count St.  Aldwyn,  who  had  been  his  contemporary 
there,  answered  Mr.  Gosse's  application  for  a  few  re- 
miniscences with  "a  horrid  little  boy,  with  a  big  head 
and  a  pasty  complexion  who  looked  as  though  a  course 
of  physical  exercise  would  have  done  him  good":  and 
he  who  has  known  the  inside  of  a  public  school  will 
ponder  this  unfaltering  pronouncement  and  shake  his 
head.  Anyhow  the  little  victim  refused  to  play,  pre- 
ferring to  read.  He  had  a  trick,  too,  then  and  all  his 
life,  of  jerking  his  arms  and  fluttering  his  hands  violently 
when  excited.  It  resembled  "St.  Vitus'  dance,"  and 
is  not  the  sort  of  thing  that  makes  sympathetic  appeal 
to  the  average  senior  and  stronger  school-fellow.  His 
parents  consulted  a  specialist,  who  "  after  a  close  exami- 
nation, "  reported  that  these  motions  resulted  from 
11  an  excess  of  electric  vitality."  Electric  or  not,  as  the 
boy  grew  and  reached  sixteen,  this  vitality  put  forth 
symptoms  of  turbulence  and  insubordination,  and  at  the 
end  of  the  summer  half  he  was  withdrawn  from  Eton 
"in  consequence  of  some  representations." 

This  happened  in  1853.     In  January  1856 — after  two 


Swinburne  259 

years  and  a  half  spent  in  out-of-door  exercise  and  de- 
sultory private  tuition — he  went  up  to  Oxford,  matricu- 
lating at  Balliol.  Scott  was  then  Master.  Jowett,  who 
had  been  passed  over  in  the  1854  election  for  headship, 
was  Regius  Professor  of  Greek,  but  the  heresy-hunters 
still  laid  their  scent  upon  him  and  his  plans  for  university 
and  college  reform.  This  persecution  of  one  who 
became  his  wise  and  enduring  friend  may  account  in 
some  part  for  Swinburne's  dislike  of  Oxford,  which 
became  inveterate.  He  resided  for  three  years  and  a 
half,  and  left  without  taking  a  degree  or  having  (so  far 
as  his  contemporaries  tell  us)  excited  any  particular 
attention  among  dons  or  undergraduates.  But : 

It  is  much  to  be  observed  that  in  later  life,  though  he 
spoke  often  and  in  affectionate  terms  of  Eton,  Swinburne 
was  never  betrayed  into  the  smallest  commendation  of 
Oxford.  He  was  indeed  unwilling  to  mention  the  Univer- 
sity. .  .  .  Long  afterwards,  in  late  middle  life,  he  railed 
against  Matthew  Arnold  for  his  "effusive  Oxonolatry," 
and  earlier  he  had  contrived  to  analyse  and  commend  The 
Scholar-Gipsy  and  Thyrsis  without  so  much  as  naming  the 
"sweet  city  with  her  dreaming  spires"  which  is  the  very 
substance  of  those  poems. 

He  made  friends — some  good  for  him,  some  rather 
obviously  the  reverse:  he  competed  for  the  Newdigate 
(subject— "The  Discovery  of  the  North-West  Pass- 
age") and  failed,  having  sent  in  a  composition  far 
better  than  that  which  took  the  prize ;  he  learned  to  be  a 
frantic  Republican,  bought  a  portrait  of  Orsini — would- 
be  assassin  of  Napoleon  III— hung  it  up  in  his  sitting- 
room,  opposite  that  of  Mazzini,  and  "pirouetted  in 
front  of  it  in  ecstasies  of  enthusiasm."  How  much 
Jowett  knew  of  this  does  not  appear,  nor  how  Swin- 


260  Studies  in  Literature 

burne  managed  to  tolerate  in  Jowett  (whose  weakness, 
if  he  had  one,  was  for  apparent  worldly  success)  a 
certain  admiration  for  the  third  Napoleon.  But  there 
was  never  a  break  in  their  intimacy,  which  Swinburne 
after  Jowett 's  death  commemorated  in  a  chapter  of 
reminiscences,  beginning 

Among  the  tributes  offered  to  the  memory  of  an  illustrious 
man  there  may  possibly  be  found  room  for  the  modest 
reminiscences  of  one  to  whom  the  Master  of  Balliol  was 
officially  a  stranger  and  Mr.  Jowett  was  an  honoured  and 
valued  friend. 

Other  gracious  seniors  attempted  to  take  the  some- 
what graceless  young  man  in  hand ;  notably  Dr.  (after- 
wards Sir  Henry)  Acland,  who  asked  Swinburne  to  his 
house.  Acland  was — we  can  corroborate  Mr.  Gosse's 
description — "the  soul  of  urbanity,"  but  all  the  more 
and  none  the  less  an  Acland. 

Swinburne  was  particularly  annoyed  because  Acland,  in 
his  boundless  sympathy,  wished  to  share  "the  orgies  and 
dare-devilries"  of  their  little  group;  and  on  one  occasion 
they  all  fled  to  London,  to  avoid  having  tea  in  a  meadow 
with  Acland  and  his  children.  They  behaved  very  badly, 
and  like  shy  and  naughty  boys,  to  excellent  Dr.  Acland, 
whom  they  privately  called,  I  do  not  know  why,  "the  Rose 
of  Brazil";  but  the  biographer  has  to  admit,  with  a  blush, 
that  Swinburne  behaved  the  worst  of  all.  On  one  occasion, 
when  Dr.  Acland  was  so  kind  as  to  read  aloud  a  paper 
on  Sewage,  there  was  a  scene  over  which  the  Muse  of 
History  must  draw  a  veil. 

Against  this  we  may,  skipping  forward  a  little,  match 
an  equally  unhallowed  scene  of  the  year  1862  when 
Swinburne,  preparing  his  Poems  and  Ballads  for  the 


Swinburne  261 

press,  was  given  to  trying  the  effect  of  them  on  any 
private  audience  he  conceived  as  likely  to  be  sympa- 
thetic. The  occasion  of  the  following  experiment 
was  a  visit  to  Monckton  Milnes  (Lord  Houghton)  at 
Fryston : 

In  the  summer  of  1862  a  distinguished  party  assembled 
at  Fryston:  it  included  Venables,  James  Spedding,  the 
newly  appointed  Archbishop  of  York  (William  Thomson) , 
and  Thackeray,  the  latter  having  brought  his  two  young 
daughters,  afterwards  Lady  Ritchie  and  Mrs.  Leslie  Stephen. 
Lady  Ritchie  recalls  for  me  that  the  Houghtons  had  stimu- 
lated the  curiosity  of  their  guests  by  describing  the  young 
poet.  ...  On  Sunday  evening,  after  dinner,  he  was  asked 
to  read  aloud  some  of  his  poems.  His  choice  was  injudicious ; 
he  is  believed  to  have  recited  The  Leper;  it  is  certain  that 
he  read  Les  Noyades.  At  this  the  Archbishop  of  York 
made  so  shocked  a  face  that  Thackeray  smiled  and  whispered 
to  Lord  Houghton,  while  the  two  young  ladies,  who  had 
never  heard  such  sentiments  expressed  before,  giggled 
aloud  in  their  excitement.  Their  laughter  offended  the 
poet,  who,  however,  was  soothed  by  Lady  Houghton's 
tactfully  saying,  "Well,  Mr.  Swinburne,  if  you  will  read 
such  extraordinary  things,  you  must  expect  us  to  laugh." 
Les  Noyade;  was  then  proceeding  on  its  amazing  course, 
and  the  Archbishop  was  looking  more  and  more  horrified, 
when  suddenly  the  butler  "like  an  avenging  angel,"  as 
Lady  Ritchie  says — threw  open  the  door  and  announced, 
1 '  Prayers !  my  Lord ! ' ' 

But  our  extracts  run  ahead  of  the  story.  In  his 
third  year  at  Balliol  "turbulence"  again  began  to 
exhibit  itself,  and  Jowett  expressed  a  fear  that  his 
young  friend  might  be  sent  down.  To  protect  him 
from  this  disaster  Algernon  was  consigned  for  a  term 
to  read  history  at  Navestock  in  Essex  with  the  Rev- 


262  Studies  in  Literature 

erend  William  Stubbs,  afterwards  Bishop  of  Oxford 
and  most  renowned  of  historians,  but  then  vicar  of 
an  agricultural  parish  and  almost  unknown  to  fame. 
Stubbs,  who  had  a  sly  twist  of  humour  and  no  mean 
capacity  for  telling  a  story,  was  used  in  later  days  to 
draw  freely  on  his  recollections  of  this  amazing  guest's 
descent  upon  his  country  cure.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  he  and  Mrs.  Stubbs  made  the  stay  a  happy  one; 
but  soon  after  Swinburne's  return  to  Oxford  his  land- 
lady lodged  complaint  against  "late  hours  and  general 
irregularities,"  and  on  the  2 1st  of  November,  1859, 
Swinburne  left  Oxford,  as  he  had  left  Eton,  prematurely. 
"My  Oxonian  career  culminated  in  total  and  scandalous 
failure." 


IV 


At  Oxford  he  had  made  friends  with  Rossetti,  Burne- 
Jones,  and  Morris  during  their  famous  visit  in  which 
they  painted  frescoes  around  the  debating-hall  (long 
since  converted  to  library)  of  the  Union.  They  had 
gone  back  to  London,  and  thither  (after  patching  up  the 
quarrel  with  his  father,  who  was  naturally  incensed  over 
the  Oxford  fiasco)  Swinburne  followed  them.  There  he 
fell  easily  into  the  Pre-Raphaelite  circle  and  talked  red- 
republicanism  to  them.  They  never  doubted  his  genius 
or  his  capacity  to  express  it  in  poetry  if  he  would  choose 
to  try.  Rossetti,  then  their  real  leader,  took  from  the 
first  the  line  of  elder  brother.  He  "adopted,  with  a  full 
and  almost  boisterous  appreciation  of  the  qualities  of 
Swinburne,  and  a  tender  indulgence  to  his  frailties,  a 
tone  of  authority  in  dealing  with  '  my  little  Northum- 
brian friend, '  as  he  used  to  call  him,  which  was  emi- 
nently wholesome. "  And  Swinburne  chose  to  try.  In 


Swinburne  263 

1860,  while  writing  at  Chastelard,  he  published  his  first 
book,  The  Queen  Mother  and  Rosamond.  The  insuccess 
of  the  venture  was  conspicuous.  "Of  all  still-born 
books, ' '  said  Swinburne  afterwards, ' '  it  was  the  stillest. ' ' 
Says  Mr.  Gosse,  "Nobody  read  it,  nobody  saw  it, 
nobody  heard  of  it." 

The  Queen  Mother  might  be  turgid  and  Rosamond  a 
pale  study  in  Pre-Raphaelitism,  but  the  young  poet 
meanwhile  was  mewing  a  mighty  youth  over  such 
lyrics  as  The  Triumph  of  Time,  and  for  a  sample : 

I  will  go  back  to  the  great  sweet  mother, 

Mother  and  lover  of  men,  the  sea. 
I  will  go  down  to  her,  I  and  no  other, 

Close  with  her,  kiss  her  and  mix  her  with  me; 
Cling  to  her,  strive  with  her,  hold  her  fast : 
O  fair  white  mother,  in  days  long  past 
Born  without  sister,  born  without  brother, 

Set  free  my  soul  as  thy  soul  is  free. 

O  fair  green-girdled  mother  of  mine, 

Sea,  that  art  clothed  with  the  sun  and  the  rain, 
Thy  sweet  hard  kisses  are  strong  like  wine 
Thy  strong  embraces  are  keen  like  pain. 
Save  me  and  hide  me  with  all  thy  waves, 
Find  me  one  grave  of  thy  thousand  graves, 
Those  pure  cold  populous  graves  of  thine 

Wrought  without  hand  in  a  world  without  stain. 

It  was  not  until  1865,  however,  that,  with  Atalanta 
in  Calydon,  he  made  a  second  attempt  on  the  public. 
The  Pre-Raphaelites  indeed  had  made  some  impression 
by  this  time  with  their  paintings,  but  as  poets  they  and 
their  friends  had  met  with  the  chilliest  of  receptions. 
Meredith's  first  attempt  in  1851,  his  second  in  1862, 
Morris's  first  in  1858,  Swinburne's  own  in  1860,  D.  G. 


264  Studies  in  Literature 

Rossetti's  in  1861,  had  missed  fire,  one  and  all  and  com- 
pletely. It  was  not  until  1862  that  Christina  Rossetti 
scored  the  first  success  with  Goblin  Market  —  "Chris- 
tina, "  said  Swinburne,  "was  the  Jael  who  led  our  host 
to  victory."  So  the  publisher  (Bertram  Payne,  of  the 
firm  of  Moxon)  had  small  confidence,  rested  his  only 
hope  on  making  the  book  beautiful  in  outward  appear- 
ance, and,  confining  the  first  edition  to  a  hundred  copies 
or  so,  spent  pains  to  cover  them  in  ivory-white  buckram 
adorned  with  mystic  golden  spheres.  It  must  have 
been  a  high  moment  in  April,  1865,  for  one  or  two  who 
opened  these  covers  and  came,  first,  upon  the  Greek 
elegiac  dedication  to  Landor  : 

oBiuoTe  doIi;,  flpov,  o^xa  ffXon;  <pfyov  o^aac 


and  then  upon  the  exquisite  opening  of  the  poem  itself: 

Maiden,  and  mistress  of  the  months  and  stars 
Now  folded  in  the  flowerless  fields  of  heaven.  .  .  . 

Here  was  writing  truly  Hellenic,  of  the  right  line  of 
tradition,  and  we  should  despair  of  the  future  of  our 
literature  —  watered  as  it  has  ever  been  and  renewed 
from  Mediterranean  springs  —  if  we  believed  that 
England  will  soon  lack  men  of  an  intellect  ready  to 
recognise  that,  to  hail  and  salute  it.  No  such  curse,  at 
all  events,  had  descended  upon  our  nation  in  1865. 
Atalanta,  and  Swinburne  with  it,  soared  into  sudden 
fame.  It  was  a  song  before  sunrise,  a  shaft  of  morning 
after  long  watches,  lighting  the  hearts  of  the  faithful 
with  hope  : 

And  hope  was  strong,  and  life  itself  not  weak. 


Swinburne  265 


We  have  hinted  at  the  rest  of  the  story  in  previous 
pages,  and  need  not  dwell  on  it  here  nor  tell  it  at  length. 
In  particular  we  would  skirt  quickly  around  the  throng 
which  vociferated  about  Poems  and  Ballads  in  1866, 
because  it  not  only  missed  infinite  good  for  the  sake  of  a 
little  evil,  but,  even  in  so  far  as  it  happened  to  be  right, 
mistook  the  symptom  for  the  disease. 

The  true  danger,  for  poetry,  was  not  so  much  that 
Swinburne  had  fallen  into  bad  courses,  as  that  he  might 
fall  into  pedantry.  Now  there  is — as  every  student  of 
literature,  and  especially  every  student  of  medieval 
literature,  must  know — a  pedantry  which  relaxes,  as 
well  as  a  pedantry  which  binds.  The  actual  disease  is 
a  withering  up  of  the  man  within,  by  which  he  loses 
sense  of  literature  as  a  grace  of  life  and  conies  to  mistake 
it  for  an  end  in  itself,  even  for  life  itself. 

Now  we  make  no  doubt  that  Swinburne's  way  of  life 
helped  towards  that  ossification  which  overtook  his 
genius.  It  must  have  acted  so,  since  (as  Burns  knew 
and  noted)  the  true  tragedy  of  profligate  living  is  that 
"it  hardens  a'  within,  and  petrifies  the  feeling."  But 
we  think  George  Meredith  came  nearer  to  diagnosing 
the  real  trouble  when  he  wrote,  "  I  don't  see  any  internal 
centre  from  which  springs  anything  that  he  does.  He 
will  make  a  great  name,  but  whether  he  is  to  distinguish 
himself  solidly  as  an  artist  I  would  not  willingly  pro- 
gnosticate." Meredith  touched  the  secret.  In  this 
elfin  genius,  when  the  rush  of  fire  had  spent  itself  over 
the  twigs,  there  was  no  log  left  "leaning  back,"  in  his 
master  Landor's  image,  with  a  male,  slow,  generating 
core  of  fire.  Set  apart  Hertha,  that  glorious  poem, 
Swinburne's  own  best-beloved,  and  all  the  blazing 


266  Studies  in  Literature 

rhetoric  of  Songs  before  Sunrise  falls  short  of  convincing 
us  that  Swinburne  ever  understood  that  greatest 
of  all  maxims,  "Look  into  thine  heart,  and  write," 
or  even  that  he  had  a  real  heart  to  look  into.  It  has 
the  fatal  chill  of  a  parti  pris:  it  fails  to  persuade,  having 
neither  sap  nor  growth  nor  any  fecundity:  it  neither 
kindles  us,  where  it  is  right,  to  passionate  assent,  nor 
moves  us  to  forgive  where  it  is  wrong.  Over  it  all  lies 
the  coming  shadow  of  pedantry. 

So,  to  speak  generally,  it  is  with  Bothwell  and  with 
almost  all  his  verse  after  Poems  and  Ballads,  Second 
Series.  Pegasus  seems  to  be  at  a  gallop  all  the  while, 
but  his  hoofs  are  for  ever  coming  down  in  the  same 
place:  and  while  monotony  (as  in  The  Faerie  Queene) 
can  be  pleasant  enough,  nothing  in  the  world  is  more 
tedious  than  a  monotony  of  strain. 

Nor,  in  the  middle  years,  could  Swinburne  search 
into  himself,  to  criticise.  Having  written  the  opening 
scene  of  Bothwell  ( 1 87 1 )  he  gave  it  over  to  Jowett  to  read. 

Jowett  pronounced  it  much  too  long.  Swinburne  was 
surprised,  but  having  a  great  respect  for  Jowett's  judgment, 
took  the  criticism  very  seriously.  Accordingly  next  day — 
they  were  living  in  the  hotel  at  Tummel  Bridge — Swin- 
burne stayed  in  bed  all  the  morning  to  work  on  the  scene. 
He  produced  it  triumphantly  at  luncheon,  when  Jowett 
dryly  observed  that  it  was  three  lines  longer  than  it  was 
before.  .  .  .  Later  on,  at  one  of  Jowett's  reading-parties 
at  West  Malvern,  R.  W.  Raper  saw  Swinburne  suddenly 
fling  himself  on  the  floor  at  Jowett's  feet,  and  heard  him 
say,  "Master,  I  feel  I  have  never  thanked  you  enough  for 
cutting  four  thousand  lines  out  of  Bothwell." 

Thus,  while  still  essaying  sustained  work  for  which 
his  genius — more  and  more  declaring  itself  to  be  merely 


Swinburne  267 

lyrical — was  unfitted,  essaying  work  for  which  at  least 
that  genius  should  have  been  put  to  hard  schooling,  he 
could  never  learn  that  a  great  poem  requires  structure 
based  on  stern  preparation  in  anatomy,  nor  see  the  need 
of  learning.  For  A  Song  of  Italy,  as  later  for  Balen,  he 
was  capable  of  choosing  a  lyrical  measure  which, 
pleasant  enough  for  a  snatch  of  song,  maddens  the  ear 
by  repetition  over  seventy  or  a  hundred  or  two  hundred 
pages.  His  critical  odes,  such  as  the  Song  for  the 
Centenary  of  Landor,  came  to  have  no  proportions  at 
all ;  and  Tristram  itself  (after  the  magnificent  prologue) 
hag-rides  the  reader  into  utter  weariness.  Swinburne, 
who  delighted  to  recite,  or  intone,  his  own  works,  could 
never  understand  that  his  auditor  might  at  any  point 
tire  of  listening.  In  1895,  he  read  Balen  through  at  a 
sitting  to  the  Dutch  novelist  Maarten  Maartens,  who 
"did  not  unreservedly  admire  his  delivery": 

It  was  too  subjective  an  outpour,  and  wearisomely  im- 
passioned, like  a  child's  jump  against  a  wall.  ...  At  the 
first  moment,  however,  when  he  ceased,  I  felt  a  poignant 
grief  that  it  was  over.  ...  It  had  been  very  beautiful 
...  all  the  difference  between  seeing  a  beautiful  woman 
and  feeling  her  embraces. 

When  we  read  Keats' s  Endymion  we  sigh  over  the 
premature  death  of  one  who,  had  the  gods  seen  fit, 
might  have  lived  to  build  with  his  material.  Swinburne 
lived  and  never  built,  never  arrived  at  seeing  that 
architectonic  is  necessary. 

VI 

In  London,  as  at  Oxford,  Swinburne  made  friends 
good  and  bad  for  him.  Among  the  latter  must  be 
counted  the  much-travelled  Richard  Burton,  translator 


268  Studies  in  Literature 

of  The  A  rabian  Nights.  ' '  Burton,  a  giant  of  endurance, 
and  possessed  at  times  with  a  kind  of  dionysiac  frenzy, 
was  no  fortunate  company  for  a  nervous  and  yet  spirited 
man  like  Swinburne  " — who,  it  may  be  told,  had  already, 
by  his  excesses,  superinduced  a  kind  of  epilepsy  upon 
his  habitual  twitch. 

It  took  the  form  of  a  convulsive  fit,  in  which,  generally 
after  a  period  of  very  great  cerebral  excitement,  he  would 
suddenly  fall  unconscious.  These  fits  were  excessively 
distressing  to  witness,  and  produced  a  shock  of  alarm  all 
the  more  acute  because  of*the  death-like  appearance  of  the 
patient.  Oddly  enough,  however,  the  person  who  seemed 
to  suffer  from  them  least  was  Swinburne  himself.  The 
only  real  danger  appeared  to  be  that  he  would  hit  himself 
in  his  fall,  which  indeed  he  repeatedly  and  severely  did. 
But  his  general  recovery  after  these  fits  was  magical,  and 
it  positively  struck  one — if  it  is  not  absurd  to  say  so — that 
he  was  better  after  them,  as  after  a  storm  of  the  nerves. 

So  it  happened  again  and  again.  The  Admiral  would 
be  hastily  summoned  to  London  to  take  his  son  home 
to  the  country.  In  two  days'  time  Algernon  would  be 
out  and  about,  a  "good  boy"  chastened,  affectionate, 
extremely  docile.  Then  after  some  weeks  would  come 
the  return  to  London ,  and  in  due  course  more  "ir- 
regularity" more  irritability,  more  quarrels  with  his 
best  friends,  another  fit,  another  telegram  to  the  Ad- 
miral, another  swift  recovery.  It  seemed  to  work 
out  like  a  sum  with  a  recurrent  decimal ;  but  actual  life 
is  less  tolerant  of  recurrent  "irregularity"  than  is 
mathematics.  In  actual  life  you  may  expel  nature 
with  a  thyrsus — tamen  usque  recur  ret.  The  crash 
came  in  August,  1879.  He  had  lost  his  father;  he  had 
alienated  his  friends;  he  had  a  fancy  for  a  while  to  have 


Swinburne  269 

nothing  to  do  with  his  family,  even  with  his  mother. 
He  lived  lonely  in  his  rooms  in  Great  James  Street, 
"  in  a  state  of  constant  f ebrility  and  ill-health. ' '  There 
an  illness  took  him  and  carried  him  to  the  very  doors 
of  death,  just  outside  of  which  Mr.  Theodore  Watts 
(afterwards  Watts-Dunton)  entered  upon  the  scene 
and  saved  him. 

VII 

Mr.  Watts,  a  solicitor  of  St.  Ives  in  Huntingdonshire, 
had  come  up  to  London  in  the  year  1872  or  thereabouts 
with  an  ardent  enthusiasm  for  the  group  of  Pre-Raphael- 
ites,  and  had  been  baffled  in  a  first  attempt  to  make 
Swinburne's  acquaintance.  Towards  the  end  of  the 
year,  however,  Madox  Brown  advised  Swinburne, 
whose  business  affairs  he  knew  to  be  in  a  tangle,  to 
place  them  in  the  hands  of  Theodore  Watts ;  which  he 
did,  with  very  happy  results. 

In  September,  1879,  then,  armed  with  the  approval  of 
Lady  Jane  Swinburne,  Watts  called  at  3  Great  James 
Street  and,  finding  the  poet  in  a  truly  deplorable  condi- 
tion, carried  him  almost  by  force  to  his  own  rooms, 
close  by,  and  thence,  after  a  week  or  two,  to  the  upper 
storey  of  a  semi-detached  villa  at  Putney,  hired  for  the 
purpose.  Again  Swinburne  made  an  amazing  recovery. 
By  the  middle  of  October  he  was  able  to  resume  his 
correspondence,  to  read,  and  even  to  walk  out  of  doors. 
But  he  had  been  near  enough  to  the  grave  to  look  into  it : 
and  henceforth  he  put  himself  into  Watts' s  tutelage 
with  a  childlike  and  most  pathetic  trust.  A  lease  was 
taken  of  "The  Pines,"  Putney,  and  there  the  two  lived 
together  for  nearly  thirty  years.  Watts  supervised 
the  poet's  food  and  drink,  administered  his  moneys, 


270  Studies  in  Literature 

kept  away  callers  (with  the  help  of  an  inexorable 
maidservant),  and  mapped  out  his  days  with  almost 
mathematical  precision.  Towards  the  middle  of  every 
morning  Swinburne,  no  matter  what  the  weather,  took 
a  long  walk  "generally  up  Putney  Hill  and  over  the 
Heath,  but  sometimes  along  the  Richmond  Road  to 
the  Mortlake  Arms,  and  then  through  Barnes  Common 
as  far  as  Barnes  Green  and  the  Church."  At  the 
corner-shop  of  the  Misses  Frost,  going  into  Wimbledon, 
he  bought  his  newspapers  and  ordered  his  books. 

In  storm  and  rain,  always  without  an  umbrella,  the  little 
erect  figure,  with  damp  curls  emerging  from  under  a  soft 
felt  hat,  might  be  seen  walking,  walking  ...  so  that  he 
became  a  portent  and  a  legend  throughout  the  confines  of 
Wandsworth  and  Wimbledon.  He  always  returned  home 
a  little  while  before  the  midday  luncheon,  or  dinner;  and 
at  2.30,  with  clockwork  regularity,  he  "disappeared  to 
enjoy  a  siesta,"  which  sometimes  lasted  until  4.30.  Then 
he  would  work  for  a  while.  ...  In  the  evening  his  regular 
habit  was  to  read  aloud.  ...  In  these  conditions  his  health 
became  perfect;  he  developed  into  a  sturdy  little  old  man 
without  an  ache  or  a  pain;  and  he  who  had  suffered  so  long 
in  London  from  absence  of  appetite  and  wasting  insomnia, 
for  the  last  thirty  years  of  his  life  at  Putney  ate  like  a  cater- 
pillar and  slept  like  a  dormouse. 

"Walking,  walking,"  for  thirty  years.  But  that 
which  walked  was  the  ghost  of  the  poet  who  had  written 
Atalanta  and  Poems  and  Ballads.  It  is  pretty  safe  to 
say  that  Watts  had  saved  Swinburne's  life:  it  is  certain 
that  he  had  averted  a  tragedy :  and  against  this  positive 
deed  of  friendship  and  thirty  years  of  devotion  little  is 
set  by  sneering  at  Watts  as  "  a  pedicure  of  the  Muses  "- 
which,  we  believe,  was  Meredith's  phrase  for  him.  It 
must  be  allowed,  however,  that  Watts  averted  tragedy 


Swinburne  271 

only  by  turning  these  thirty  years  into  comedy,  and 
rather  absurd  comedy.  The  worst  was  not  that  Watts, 
in  the  jealousy  of  his  sway,  allowanced  the  supply  of 
other  friends  even  more  sternly  than  he  cut  down 
"The  Bard's"  liquor;  nor  that,  as  elderly  ladies  suc- 
cumb to  the  wiles  of  the  tramp,  he  and  Swinburne, 
while  mostly  inaccessible  to  real  authors,  were  given  to 
open  their  door  to  any  who  oiled  its  key  with  praise  of 
Watts's  own  preposterous  novel  Aylwin.  Nor  was  it 
even  the  worst  that,  happening  in  his  own  way  to  dislike 
such  faulty  but  full-blooded  poets  as  Byron  and  Walt 
Whitman,  he  drew  Swinburne  to  abuse  both,  whom  he 
had  formerly  admired,  and  recant  noble  praise  in  terms 
of  scurrility.  The  unpardonable  fault  was  that,  ad- 
miring the  rhetorical  aptitude  which  had  always  been 
Swinburne's  bane,  he  encouraged  him  to  substitute  rhe- 
toric for  poetry  and  rhetoric  for  prose:  and  so,  while 
Swinburne  wrote  much  in  these  thirty  years — especially 
on  Shakespeare — that  was  marvellous;  though  Swin- 
burne himself  be  to  blame  that  the  more  he  learned  of 
Mary  Queen  of  Scots  the  more  it  got  in  the  way  of 
poetry  about  her;  old  lovers  of  his  verse  and  prose 
cannot  help  feeling  that  "the  rest  is  silence"  may 
be,  after  all,  a  better  epitaph  than  "the  rest  is — 
rhetoric." 

We  will  not  quote  for  disparagement  the  worst  pas- 
sages which  deal  with  Byron  and  Whitman  in  Mis- 
cellanies and  Studies  in  Prose  and  Poetry  (1891  and 
1894) ;  but  we  will  append  a  passage  on  Byron,  written 
in  1866,  to  show  what  a  prose-writer  was  lost  in  Swin- 
burne: 

His  work  was  done  at  Missolonghi;  all  of  his  work  for 
which  the  fates  could  spare  him  time.  A  little  space  was 


272  Studies  in  Literature 

allowed  him  to  show  at  least  a  heroic  purpose,  and  attest  a 
high  design;  then,  with  all  things  unfinished  before  him  and 
behind,  he  fell  asleep  after  many  troubles  and  triumphs. 
Few  can  ever  have  gone  wearier  to  the  grave;  none  with  less 
fear.  He  had  done  enough  to  earn  his  rest.  Forgetful 
now  and  set  free  for  ever  from  all  faults  and  foes,  he  passed 
through  the  doorway  of  no  ignoble  death  out  of  reach  of 
time,  out  of  sight  of  love,  out  of  hearing  of  hatred,  beyond 
the  blame  of  England  and  the  praise  of  Greece.  In  the 
full  strength  of  spirit  and  of  body  his  destiny  overtook  him, 
and  made  an  end  of  all  his  labours.  He  had  seen  and  borne 
and  achieved  more  than  most  men  on  record.  "He  was  a 
great  man,  good  at  many  things,  and  now  he  had  attained 
his  rest." 

VIII 

We  have  indicated  what  we  think  the  worst  to  be 
lamented  of  those  last  thirty  years,  and,  for  all  our  debt 
to  the  memory  of  Mr.  Watts-Dunton  and  our  gratitude 
for  the  work  Swinburne  accomplished  in  those  years, 
it  remains  lamentable.  Desperate  causes  may  require 
desperate  remedies :  the  devotion  which  applied  these 
and  kept  a  friend  alive  and  happy  cannot,  must  not,  be 
slighted.  But  as  little  can  its  effect  be  gainsaid — that 
a  biography  of  Swinburne  must,  to  be  true,  overbalance 
the  end  with  the  beginning  and  can  hardly,  to  be  told 
well,  escape  being  told  with  a  touch  of  ironic  humour,  of 
laughter  amid  tears  for  humanity  and  its  ways.  Mr. 
Gosse  has  written  it  so ;  written  it  with  infallible  tact ; 
written  it  just  as  well  as  it  could  be  written.  But  it  is 
so,  and  the  pity  is  it  should  be  so.  How  were  the  roses 
so  fresh  and  so  fair!  .  .  .  This  man,  who  succumbed  to 
frailty,  was  a  splendid  poet,  and  his  verse  will  yet 
avenge  him  on  Time.  Meanwhile 


Swinburne  273 

Who  shall  seek  thee  and  bring 

And  restore  thee  thy  day, 
When  the  dove  dipt  her  wing 
And  the  oars  won  their  way 

Where  the  narrowing  Symplegades  whitened  the  straits  of 
Propontis  with  spray? 

18 


CHARLES   READE 

/CHARLES  READE  was  born  a  hundred  years  ago, 
V^  on  the  8th  of  June,  1 8 14 ;  he  died  on  Good  Friday, 
April  11,  1884.  Then,  or  about  then,  Walter  Besant 
could  write  as  follows  of 

the  position  occupied  by  this  writer,  which  is — and  has  been, 
since  the  death  of  Thackeray  and  Dickens — alone  in  the  first 
rank.  That  is  to  say,  alone  because  he  resembles  no  other 
writer  living  or  dead — not  alone  because  there  has  been  no 
other  writer  in  line  with  him.  His  merits  are  his  own,  and 
they  are  those  of  the  first  order  of  writers.  He  cannot  be 
classified  or  compared ;  in  order  to  be  classified,  a  man  must 
be  either  a  leader  or  one  of  a  following.  Reade  certainly 
cannot  be  accused  of  following.  One  can  only  say  that  he 
stands  in  the  front  rank  and  he  stands  alone.  One  can  only 
say  that  this  great  writer — there  is  no  greater  praise — paints 
women  as  they  are,  men  as  they  are,  things  as  they  are  ... 

all  of  which  is  skimble-skamble  thought  in  slipshod 
language;  a  confusion  of  platitude,  falsity,  and  non- 
sense stark  but  inarticulate.  (Also  George  Eliot  sur- 
vived Thackeray  and  Dickens  by  some  years.)  Still  it 
is  obviously  trying,  under  a  spell  of  admiration,  to  say 
something  about  Charles  Reade ;  and  the  mischief — for 
those  of  us  who  admire  Reade,  albeit  differently — lurks 
in  a  little  devil  of  a  doubt  that  anyone,  a  hundred  years 
hence,  will  care  either  for  the  something  Besant  wanted 
to  say  or  for  the  reservations  we  think  worth  while. 
274 


Charles  Reade  275 

Reade  as  a  novelist  had  merits  we  can  hardly  believe 
to  be  perishable.  To  take  the  most  eminent :  when  he 
"got  going"  upon  high,  straight  epic  narrative — Ge- 
rard's odyssey,  the  last  voyage  of  the  Agra,  the  bursting 
of  Ousely  dam,  the  storming  of  the  Bastion  St.  Andre — 
no  one  of  his  contemporaries  could  touch  him;  no 
English  writer,  at  any  rate,  could  get  near  him.  Nor 
were  these  efforts  mere  spurts  of  invention;  but  long, 
strong,  masterly  running,  sustained  right  to  the  goal 
over  scores  of  pages.  Could  one  but  pluck  these  chap- 
ters out  of  his  books,  blot  the  residue  out  of  existence, 
and  holding  them  out  to  posterity  (they  would  make  no 
mean  handful  either)  challenge  it  to  refuse  Reade  a 
place  in  the  very  first  rank,  there  could  be  no  answer. 
He  had  other  great  merits  too ;  but  with  them  a  fatal 
talent  for  murdering  his  own  reputation,  for  capping 
every  triumph  with  an  instant  folly,  either  in  the  books 
themselves  or  in  his  public  behaviour ;  and  these  follies 
were  none  the  less  disastrous  for  being  prompted  by  a 
nature  at  once  large,  manly,  generous,  tender,  incapable 
of  self-control,  constitutionally  passionate,  and  in  pas- 
sion as  blind  as  a  bat. 

He  started  in  life  as  the  youngest  of  eleven  children ; 
son  of  a  high  Tory  squire  (of  tall  and  noble  presence) 
and  a  lady  who  had  descended  upon  Ipsden  in  Oxford- 
shire out  of  the  inner  social  circle  of  Buckingham  Palace 
and  the  Regency.  To  quote  the  official  Memoir  into 
which  Reade' s  luck  followed  him  (it  fills  two  volumes 
worthy  to  survive  for  brilliance  of  fatuity  even  when 
their  subject  shall  be  forgotten),  "Charles  Reade  was 
born  into  a  refined  family  circle,  for  his  mother  had  the 
bel  air  of  the  Court,  and  his  father  was  a  gentleman  of 
the  old  school. ' '  Further,  the  mother ' '  was  no  common 
woman.  Born  under  the  torrid  sun  of  Madras,  im- 


276  Studies  in  Literature 

mersed  while  yet  a  girl  in  the  life  of  politics,  society,  and 
the  Court,  she  was  before  all  things  a  lady  [!].  Haydn 
taught  her  music,  and  Sheridan  epigram  and  repartee. 
Her  manner  was  perfect,  and  her  conversational  powers 
so  extraordinary  as  to  have  fascinated  so  superior  a 
master  of  rhetoric  as  Samuel  Wilberforce."  In  the 
country  she  imbibed  religion  (Calvinism)  from  a  divine 
who,  "  though  a  splendid  preacher  and  a  Hebrew  scholar 
never  attained  to  the  semblance  of  a  gentleman.  In  his 
old  age  a  long  pipe  and  a  spittoon  were  his  inseparable 
companions."  Environed  by  this  Arcadian  simplicity, 
Mrs.  Reade  lived  and  did  her  work  industriously  and 
happily.  She  was  at  once  domestic  and  social,  with  an 
aptitude  for  cultivating  the  great  of  the  earth. 

Lord  Thurlow  was  godfather  to  her  eldest  son;  Barring- 
ton,  the  Prince-Bishop  of  Durham,  who  resided  at  Mong- 
well  Park,  three  miles  off,  became  sponsor  for  her  fourth; 
and  Warren  Hastings  for  her  youngest  daughter.  "My 
dearest  Lady  Effingham"  was  the  friend  of  her  life-time 
until  that  lady  in  her  eighth  decade  ran  away  with  a  Scrip- 
ture-Reader, when  the  note  changed  and  she  was  styled 
"That  horrid  old  woman." 

She  was  a  daughter  of  Major  John  Scott  (afterwards 
Scott-Waring),  M.P.  for  the  old  borough  of  Stockbridge, 
Hants — a  figure  in  the  polite  and  the  party  memoirs  of 
his  age ;  and,  like  most  women  trained  in  its  high  politics, 
she  had  a  sharp  eye  for  "openings."  "Her  influence 
with  the  Board  of  Directors  of  the  Old  East  India 
Company  was  virtually  paramount.  She  obtained  no 
less  than  three  writerships  [i.e.,  appointments  in  the 
Civil  Service],  together  with  two  cavalry  cadetships,  for 
her  sons,  and  an  infantry  cadetship  for  a  connection  by 
marriage."  The  elder  sons  had  been  sent  to  public 


Charles  Reade  277 

schools— Rugby,  Haileybury,  Charterhouse;  but  she 
had  a  whim  to  subject  Charles,  her  youngest  and  her 
darling,  to  private  tuition. 


This  was  the  child's  first  misfortune,  and  no  slight 
one.  Though  the  public  schools  of  this  land  have 
pretty  steadily  evolved  some  four-fifths  of  its  admitted 
genius,  their  reputation  for  discouraging  genius  is  saecu- 
lar  and  shall  not  be  disputed  here ;  but  at  all  events  they 
discourage  those  abnormalities  of  temper  and  conduct 
to  which  genius  is  prone,  as  by  their  stern  correction  it 
is  not  infrequently  bettered.  Reade  was  committed  to 
a  flagellating  minister  at  Ifney,  who  taught  him  the 
Latin  irregular  verbs;  if  of  a  hundred  he  could  repeat 
all  correctly,  he  escaped ;  if  but  nine-and-ninety,  he  was 
caned  and — being  all  unlike  an  elder  brother  who  in  the 
midst  of  a  furious  whacking  observed  pleasantly,  "  I  say, 
if  you  keep  on  at  this  much  longer  you'll  hurt " — Charles 
was  not  cured  of  a  sensitive  skin  by  this  method  of 
graf ting-on  the  classics.  After  five  years  of  penal  servi- 
tude his  parents  removed  him  to  a  far  humaner  school 
at  Staines ;  a  change  which,  in  the  words  of  the  Memoir, 
"can  only  be  compared  to  one  from  a  diet  of  gall  to 
one  of  champagne. ' '  Even  that  (one  conjectures)  would 
not  suit  all  stomachs;  and  the  boy,  though  happier 
at  Staines,  missed  the  right  regimen  of  health  for  his 
character.  Next  came  Oxford.  His  father  the  squire, 
who  had  been  at  Rugby  and  Oriel,  could  not  see  that 
Oxford  fitted  a  man  for  life.  (He  kept  a  pack  of 
harriers.)  But  Mrs.  Reade  insisted,  and  Charles  went 
up  to  stand  for  a  demyship  at  Magdalen :  which  he  won 
in  the  teeth  of  all  probability,  not  because  he  sent  in 


278  Studies  in  Literature 

a  good  essay  (which  he  did),  nor  through  parental  wire- 
pulling, but  because  one  of  the  eight  nominee  candidates 
whom  the  Fellows  proposed  to  job  in  failed  so  conspic- 
uously that  old  Dr.  Routh  refused  to  have  him  and 
preferred  to  admit  the  outsider  who  came  of  good  family 
and  could  write  sound  English.  Luck  and  ability  com- 
bined again,  four  years  later,  to  win  him  his  fellowship. 
A  demy  of  Magdalen  in  those  days  could  only  succeed 
to  a  fellowship  on  his  particular  county,  and  then  only 
if  he  had  taken  his  degree  before  the  day  of  St.  Mary 
Magdalen  next  ensuing  after  the  vacancy.  Reade, 
though  privately  tutored  by  no- less  a  man  than  Robert 
Lowe  (afterwards  Lord  Sherbrooke),  may  have  been 
indolent ;  at  any  rate  in  the  early  summer  of  1835  he  was 
unprepared  for  "Greats"  when  quite  unexpectedly  a 
vacancy  occurred  in  Oxfordshire,  his  own  county.  The 
month  was  June,  and  he  had  twenty-four  hours  in  which 
to  decide  between  entering  his  name  for  a  pass  or  for 
honours.  For  the  pass  he  would  have  to  sit  at  once; 
and,  though  the  examination  was  light  as  compared 
with  the  other,  a  total  ignorance  of  the  books  offered 
would  hardly  be  covered  by  autoschediastic  brilliancy. 
He  therefore  entered  his  name  for  honours,  and  in  the 
three  weeks'  respite  read  furiously.  Thirty-six  hours 
before  the  examination  he  began  upon  the  Thirty-nine 
Articles,  which  all  candidates  had  to  commit  to  memory 
— rejection  on  this  test  invalidating  success  in  all  the 
others.  He  had  a  bad  memory  (ruined,  as  he  always 
maintained,  by  ferocious  overtaxing  at  his  first  school). 
Lo!  when  he  started  upon  this  task,  which  he  had  left 
to  the  last,  his  memory  collapsed.  To  make  matters 
worse,  the  three  weeks'  strain  had  brought  on  a  racking 
neuralgia.  He  walked  up  to  the  examination  table 
knowing  just  three  Articles  by  rote;  his  mind,  for  the 


Charles  Reade  279 

remaining  thirty-six,  a  blank.  The  Article  chosen  by 
the  examiner  chanced  to  be  one  of  the  magic  three. 
Reade  repeated  it  pat,  won  his  degree,  and  inherited  his 
fellowship. 

Later,  and  having  in  the  meantime  entered  at  Lin- 
coln's Inn  and  begun  to  study  law,  he  achieved  the 
Vinerian  Scholarship,  less  by  luck  than  by  good  manage- 
ment. The  Masters  of  Arts  elected  to  this  scholarship; 
and  the  Fellows  of  Magdalen,  though  etiquette  forbade 
them  to  vote  or  canvass  against  one  of  their  Society, 
had  by  this  time  been  chafed  more  than  a  little  by 
Reade's  "nodosities"  and  angularities  of  temper,  and 
would  help  him  to  no  university  backing.  It  occurred 
to  Reade  that,  with  his  father's  influence  in  the  shire, 
he  might  whip  up  a  number  of  county  gentlemen  who 
happened  to  be  M.A.'s  and  surprise,  perhaps  even 
swamp,  the  resident  voters. 

His  mother  canvassed  the  clergy;  and,  when  favourable 
answers  were  obtained,  offered  conveyances  free  of  cost. 
On  the  day  of  election  Oxford  swarmed  with  squires  and 
parsons  whipped  up  for  Charles  Reade,  and  thus  when  he 
came  in  head  of  the  poll  by  a  substantial  majority,  some 
chagrin  found  expression  within  the  bosom  of  the  college. 

In  truth,  this  contentious,  irascible  man  was  no  easy 
fellow  for  any  collegiate  society,  let  alone  that  of  Mag- 
dalen under  Dr.  Routh.  His  colleagues  found  him  gey 
ill  to  live  with ;  while  he,  smarting  as  he  did  under  every 
petty  wound,  real  or  imaginary — and,  for  a  real  one, 
there  had  been  an  attempt  to  oust  him  save  on  a  con- 
dition of  his  taking  orders — saw  no  more  of  them  than 
he  was  obliged.  He  rarely  dined  in  hall :  but  he  swore 
by  the  college  cook  (who  swore  by  him),  and  in  later 
years  even  bought  himself  a  set  of  silver  dishes  in  which 


280  Studies  in  Literature 

his  dinners  were  conveyed  from  Magdalen  to  London! 
But  he  wished  to  be  quit  of  college  business,  though  he 
duly  served  his  term  as  Dean  of  Arts — in  a  green  coat 
with  brass  buttons,  a  costume  at  which  the  late  Goldwin 
Smith  took  deep  umbrage. 

II 

In  1839  Reade  left  Oxford  for  a  sort  of  grand  tour, 
Paris  and  Geneva  being  the  chief  resting  places.  There- 
after for  a  few  years  he  wandered  a  great  deal,  especially 
in  Scotland — as  the  Memoir  puts  it :  "between  the  years 
1837  and  1847  his  visits  to  the  land  of  cakes  were 
chronic."  When  at  home  he  had,  so  to  speak,  three 
homes — Ipsden,  Magdalen,  and  some  chambers  he 
rented  in  Leicester  square — nor  was  either  of  them 
warned  when  to  expect  him:  for  he  kept  a  separate 
wardrobe  at  each,  travelled  without  luggage,  and  prob- 
ably would  have  disdained  the  telegraph  had  it  been 
invented.  His  rooms  in  Leicester  square  swarmed  with 
squirrels  which  he  imported  from  Ipsden.  He  started  a 
craze  for  violins ;  collected  Cremonas,  plunged  into  the 
secrets  of  their  manufacture,  almost  desperately  of- 
fended his  father  by  spilling  varnishes  from  his  win- 
dow-sill over  the  white  front  of  Ipsden;  bolted  in  a 
huff  for  the  continent  and  Paris ;  almost  lost  his  life  as  a 
hated  Englishman  in  the  Revolution  of  1848;  escaped 
in  a  cab  under  a  truss  of  straw;  and  arrived  back  at 
Ipsden  travel- stained  but  cool,  as  he  could  be  when 
not  enraged  by  trifles.  "My  dear  Charles,"  was  the 
greeting,  "you  have  had  a  narrow  escape  of  your  life."- 
"  I  have.  They  put  me  into  a  damp  bed  at  Boulogne." 

We  come  now  to  that  turn  in  Reade's  fate  which,  if 
but  for  it  he  had  never  been  a  writer,  must  be  accounted 


Charles  Reade  281 

a  blessing,  as  to  the  last  he  loudly  and  sincerely  pro- 
claimed it.  But  if  primarily  a  blessing  in  a  dozen  ways 
(or  we  are  grievously  mistaken)  it  proved  to  be  a  steady 
curse,  though  the  woman  responsible  was  innocent  of  all 
conscious  harm.  He  had  always  been  attracted  by  the 
stage.  He  reckoned  drama  to  be  the  first  of  the  arts. 
He  left  orders  to  be  written  on  his  tomb:  "Charles 
Reade:  Dramatist,  Novelist,  Journalist" — in  that  or- 
der. About  this  time,  1849,  when  "his  fine  old  sire 
paid  the  debt  of  nature"  (Memoir},  he  wrote  a  play — 
many  plays.  He  took  it  to  "  a  distinguished  comedian, 
Mrs.  Seymour,"  then  acting  with  Buckstone  at  the 
Haymarket.  ' '  She  was  magnanimous  and  appreciative 
and,  like  many  women  of  her  calibre,  could  recognise 
the  difference  between  a  real  and  a  sham  gentleman. 
Ladies  whom  the  voice  of  scandal  has  spared  have  been 
less  warm-hearted,"  &c.  (Memoir}.  "It  may,  how- 
ever, be  safely  predicted  [sic]  that  he  (Reade)  stood 
alone  in  believing  her  to  be  a  really  great  artist."  He 
asked  for  an  interview.  "The  response  was  in  the 
affirmative ' '  (Memoir} .  She  did  not  think  much  of  the 
play,  and  showed  that  she  didn't.  Reade  had  called 
"hat  in  hand" ;  "politely,  and  without  any  show  of  the 
offence  he  felt  he  bowed  himself  out. "  She  felt  sorry, 
pitied  "a  fine  man  with  the  bel  air  of  one  accustomed 
to  society,"  jumped  (mistakingly)  at  the  guess  that  he 
was  hard  up  for  money,  sat  down  and  wrote  a  letter. 
It  fetched  Reade  back  with  an  explanation. 

What  passed  at  that  interview  is  not  known.  Each  had 
learnt  in  a  moment  to  respect  the  other,  and  we  may  be  sure 
that  a  friendship  thus  commenced  was  from  the  outset 
regarded  as  sacred.  It  had  moreover  to  develope.  ...  It 
must,  however,  be  categorically  asserted  [sic]  on  the  individ- 


282  Studies  in  Literature 

ual  authority  [sic]  of  the  late  Mr.  Winwood  Reade,  who  was 
a  constant  inmate  subsequently  of  their  house  in  Bolton 
Row,  that  the  friendship  between  these  two  was  platonic. 

To  have  done  with  this  egregious  Memoir. — No  one 
doubts  that  Mrs.  Seymour  was  an  honest  lady,  or  that 
she  started  Charles  Reade  upon  writing  novels,  or  that 
she  gave  him  some  sound  practical  advice  by  the  way. 
But  the  crucial  test  of  such  a  partnership  as  this  (and 
there  have  been  not  a  few  in  the  history  of  letters)  is 
only  passed  when  the  silent  partner  supplies  that  self- 
criticism  which  the  active  partner  lacks.  Unless  the 
two  are  thus  complementary — if  the  silent  one  merely 
encourages  the  active  performer  to  the  top  of  his  bent — 
the  momentum  but  drives  forward  an  inordinate  mass 
to  topple  by  its  own  weight;  as  Lewes  drove  George 
Eliot  from  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life  to  Deronda.  Now 
Mrs.  Seymour,  a  woman  of  little  cultivation,  was  quite 
incapable  of  correcting,  because  incapable  of  perceiving, 
those  defects  of  taste  and  temper  to  which  Reade  was 
prone.  If  she  did  not  foster  them  she  at  least  left  these 
idiosyncrasies  to  mar  his  work.  Worse  even  than  this 
— she  was  an  actress,  and  not  a  first-class  actress,  of 
a  very  bad  period.  She  saw  everything  "literary "in 
the  light  of  the  stage,  and  her  stage  was  of  the  stagiest. 
By  ill-luck  Reade,  too,  suffered  from  this  false  stage-eye. 
He  too  saw  all  his  novels  first  as  plays.  His  earliest, 
Peg  Wqffington,  was  adapted  straight  from  a  short 
play,  Masks  and  Faces,  which  still  holds  the  boards  in 
spite  (or  by  virtue)  of  what  Swinburne  called  "  the  pre- 
posterous incident"  of  the  living  portrait.  Rightly 
classing  this  with  the  burlesque  duel  in  Christie  John- 
stone,  Swinburne  rightly  adds  that  "in  serious  fiction 
they  are  such  blemishes  as  cannot  be  effaced  and  can 


Charles  Reade  283 

hardly  be  redeemed  by  the-  charming  scenes  which 
precede  or  follow  them."  The  tedious  conclusion  of  the 
first  of  the  long  novels,  It  is  Never  too  Late  to  Mend,  with 
its  avenging  Jew  and  its  Wicked  Bridegroom  foiled  at 
the  church-door,  is  but  stage-grouping  and  melodrama 
carried  to  the  nth  power:  the  same  bag  of  tricks  being 
produced  again  to  affront  the  reader's  intelligence  in 
Put  Yourself  in  His  Place.  Reade  had  written  The 
Cloister  and  the  Hearth,  Hard  Cash,  and  Griffith  Gaunt  in 
the  interval  between  these  two,  and  yet  Put  Yourself  in 
His  Place  would  seem  to  prove  that  he  had  learnt  (or, 
rather,  had  unlearnt)  nothing.  The  devices  by  which 
the  hero  is  made  to  vanish  and  to  keep  his  betrothed 
without  news  that  he  is  alive  would  not  impose  on 
a  child,  and  the  sawdust  puppet  Squire  Raby  becomes 
almost  a  thing  of  horror  when  we  reflect  that  Reade 
probably  intended  him  for  a  portrait  of  his  own  father ! 
Few  men  can  have  written  a  critical  sentence  wider 
of  the  truth  than  Besant's,  "One  can  only  say  that  this 
great  writer  .  .  .  paints  women  as  they  are,  men  as 
they  are,  things  as  they  are."  That  was  just  what 
Reade  could  not  learn  to  do  for  any  length  of  time,  save 
now  and  then  when  left  alone  in  his  rooms  in  Magdalen. 
When  he  saw  men  and  women  with  the  help  of  Mrs. 
Seymour,  or  of  such  playwrights  as  Tom  Taylor 
and  Dion  Boucicault,  he  saw  them  as  dolls  making 
their  exits  and  their  entrances  behind  footlights.  He 
wrote  Foul  Play  in  collaboration  with  Dion  Boucicault, 
which  is  another  way  of  saying  that  he  submitted  his 
true  epical  daemon,  though  it  broke  loose  for  a  long  run 
in  the  splendid  adventures  of  the  castaways,  to  be 
caught  and  reconsigned  to  a  prison  of  cardboard.  He 
wrecked  Griffith  Gaunt,  which  was  coming  near  to  be  his 
best  novel,  as  Shakespeare  wrecked  The  Two  Gentlemen 


284  Studies  in  Literature 

of  Verona  (but  Shakespeare  lived  to  learn  better),  by 
making  his  hero  for  purely  stage  purposes  suddenly 
renounce  his  nature  and  behave  like  a  quite  incredible 
cad ;  nor  could  we  readily  find  by  searching  the  old  pages 
of  Bow  Bells  or  The  London  Journal  theatricality  stalk- 
ing in  such  nakedness  as  in  A  Terrible  Temptation,  one 
of  Reade's  later  works. 


Ill 


The  pity  is  the  greater  because  he  took  enormous 
trouble  to  be  true  to  fact,  and  above  everything  prided 
himself  upon  being  therefore  true  to  Nature  (whereas 
the  two  are  different  things).  His  method  of  work,  his 
method  of  preparation  for  it,  his  material  and  appliances 
— documents,  blue-books,  note-books,  newspaper  files, 
indexes — will  be  found  described  as  accessories  to  that 
full-length  portrait  of  himself  which  (for  no  artistic 
reason)  he  thrusts  into  A  Terrible  Temptation  along 
with  a  picture  of  his  work-room: 

.  .  .  an  empty  room,  the  like  of  which  Lady  Bassett 
had  never  seen;  it  was  large  in  itself  and  multiplied  tenfold 
by  great  mirrors  from  floor  to  ceiling,  with  no  frames  but  a 
narrow  oak  beading;  opposite  her  on  entering  was  a  bay 
window,  all  plate  glass,  the  central  panes  of  which  opened 
like  doors  upon  a  pretty  little  garden  that  glowed  with 
colour  and  was  backed  by  fine  trees.  .  .  .  The  numerous 
and  large  mirrors  all  down  to  the  ground  laid  hold  of  the 
garden  and  the  flowers,  and  by  double  and  triple  reflection 
filled  the  room  with  nooks  of  verdure  and  colour. 

He  used  this  device  in  his  rooms  at  Magdalen,  which 
looked  upon  the  college  deer  park;  by  mirrors  con- 
triving to  bring  it  indoors  and  around  him  while  he  sat, 


Charles  Reade  285 

like  Chaucer  in  Longfellow's  sonnet  "in  a  lodge  within 
a  park": 

The  chamber  walls  depicted  all  around, 
[Not]  With  portraitures  of  huntsman,  hawk,  and  hound 
And  the  hurt  deer  .  .  . 

but  with  the  deer  alone,  unhurt,  browsing  under  green 
branches. 

Underneath  the  table  was  a  formidable  array  of  note-books, 
standing  upright  and  labelled  on  their  backs.  There  were 
about  twenty  large  folios  of  classified  facts,  ideas,  and  pic- 
tures, for  the  very  wood-cuts  were  all  indexed  and  classified 
on  the  plan  of  a  tradesman's  ledger.  .  .  .  Then  there  was 
a  collection  of  solid  quartos  and  of  smaller  folio  guard-books 
called  Indexes.  There  were  Index  Rerum  et  Journalium — 
Index  Rerum  et  Librorum — Index  Rerum  et  Hominum — and 
a  lot  more;  indeed  so  many  that,  by  way  of  climax,  there  was 
a  fat  folio  ledger  entitled  Index  ad  Indices.  By  the  side  of 
the  table  were  six  or  seven  thick  pasteboard  cards,  each 
about  the  size  of  a  large  portfolio,  and  on  these  the  author's 
notes  and  extracts  were  collected  from  all  his  repertories 
into  something  like  a  focus  for  a  present  purpose.  He  was 
writing  a  novel  based  on  facts — facts,  incidents,  living  dia- 
logues, pictures,  reflections,  situations,  were  all  on  these 
cards  to  choose  from,  and  arranged  in  headed  columns.  .  .  . 

One  thing  this  method  taught  him  at  any  rate — to  exert 
his  style  upon  concrete  objects.  He  might,  indeed,  dis- 
tort men,  women,  things;  he  did  so  as  often  as  not;  but 
he  ever  saw  them  as  tangible,  and  detested  all  writing 
that  was  nebulous,  high-faluting,  gushing.  His  style 
is  ever  lively  and  nervous.  It  may  irritate  even  the 
moderately  fastidious ;  it  abounds  in  errors  of  taste ;  but 
is  always  vigorous,  compelling — the  style  of  a  man.  We 
feel  the  surer  that  our  account  of  it  does  no  real  injustice 


286  Studies  in  Literature 

to  poor  Mrs.  Seymour's  influence  on  observing  that 
Reade's  masterpiece  The  Cloister  and  the  Hearth  and 
Hard  Cash  (which  many  rank  next)  were  written  at  a 
remove  from  her,  in  his  college  rooms.  Anyhow  she  did 
not  know  enough  of  the  times  or  the  materials  handled 
in  The  Cloister  for  her  opinion  to  have  had  even  a  plau- 
sible value,  and  in  fact  he  seems  to  have  done  without 
it.  On  the  other  hand,  we  do  her  memory  the  justice 
to  doubt  if  any  tact,  any  skill,  could  have  taught 
Reade  tact,  cured  his  combativeness,  or  alleviated  his 
wrathful  knack  of  putting  himself  in  the  wrong.  He 
was  not  only  hasty  in  a  quarrel;  being  in  it,  he  might 
be  counted  on  to  make  his  friends  blush  and  the  cool 
observer  smile.  The  Memoir  contains  a  letter,  written 
before  he  commenced  author,  extending  over  many 
pages,  addressed  to  the  officials  of  the  Treasury  and 
haranguing  them  in  this  fashion  because  he  had  been 
charged  what  he  thought  an  excessive  import  duty 
on  some  old  violins : 

Merit  never  comes  to  bear  until  first  filtered  through  the 
consideration  of  name.  If  then  a  Man  looks  at  twenty  old 
fiddles,  the  merits  of  which  he  can  see,  but  does  not  know 
who  made  each  and  how  that  Maker  ranks  in  the  Market — 
where  is  he?  and  what  is  he? — a  sailor  on  the  wide  Pacific 
without  a  compass  or  a  star  is  not  more  the  sport  of  water 
and  wind  than  such  a  man  as  this  is  of  flighty  dreams  and  of 
brute  chance.  ...  Oh!  my  Lords,  if  you  or  the  Com- 
missioners would  only  condescend  to  look  at  the  things. 
.  .  .  Malice  is  a  blackguard,  but  Ignorance  is  a  Wild 
Beast,  &c.,  &c. 

This  kind  of  thing  may  not  have  been  ineradicable  in 
Reade,  but  it  was  certainly  never  eradicated.  To  the 
end — for  example  when  accused  of  plagiarising  from 


Charles  Reade  287 

Swift  in  The  Wandering  Heir — he  could  never  fit  the 
word  with  the  occasion  or  keep  any  sense  of  propor- 
tion between  the  argument  and  his  temper.  A  simi- 
lar tactlessness  led  him,  having  accepted  a  commission 
from  the  firm  of  Cassell,  Fetter  and  Galpin,  to  affront 
the  readers  of  Cas  sell's  Magazine  with  A  Terrible  Tempta- 
tion. Nobody  could  have  been  more  genuinely  amazed 
and  indignant  than  was  Reade  at  the  reprobation 
it  excited;  but  so  recently  as  twenty  years  ago  a  mis- 
chievous person  in  search  of  amusement  could  count  on 
it  if  he  walked  into  Messrs.  Cassell' s  premises  and 
pronounced  the  name  of  Charles  Reade  in  a  voice  above 
a  whisper.  Reade,  to  be  sure,  had  usually  moral  right 
on  his  side,  and  behind  his  excesses;  and  the  amount 
of  positive  good  he  did,  not  only  towards  reforming 
social  abuses  by  such  works  as  It  is  Never  Too  Late  to 
Mend  and  Hard  Cash,  but  by  pamphlets  and  letters 
championing  individual  victims  of  injustice,  would 
amount  to  a  fine  total.  But  we  are  considering  him 
as  an  artist,  and  the  artistic  side  and  the  side  of 
the  angels  are  not  conterminous,  though  they  agree 
roughly. 

The  general  verdict  seems  to  be  that,  while  Griffith 
Gaunt  and  Hard  Cash  are  works  of  mastery  (and  the 
high  seriousness  of  Griffith  Gaunt  cannot  be  denied), 
The  Cloister  and  the  Hearth  was  his  masterpiece.  With 
this  verdict  we  entirely  agree,  and  hold  that,  if  there 
must  be  a  first  place  among  "historical"  novels,  that 
work  and  Esmond  are  the  great  challengers  for  it. 
For  artistry,  grace  of  handling,  ease,  finish,  the  delicate 
rhythm  of  its  prose,  nice  perception  of  where  to  restrain 
passion,  where  and  how  far  to  let  it  go,  Esmond  must 
carry  every  vote.  The  Cloister  and  the  Hearth,  moreover, 
tails  out  tediously,  though  the  end,  when  it  comes,  is 


288  Studies  in  Literature 

exquisite — a  thing  of  human  blood  purified  to  tears_and 
tears  to  divine  balm. 

"But  now  the  good  fight  is  won,  ah  me!  Oh  my  love,  if 
thou  hast  lived  doubting  of  thy  Gerard's  heart,  die  not  so; 
for  never  was  woman  loved  so  tenderly  as  thou  this  ten  years 
past." 

"Calm  tnyself,  dear  one,"  said  the  dying  woman  with  a 
heavenly  smile.  "I  know  it;  only  being  a  woman,  I  could 
not  die  happy  till  I  had  heard  thee  say  so." 

In  the  depth  of  this,  as  through  the  whole  story  which 
it  closes,  shines  a  something  which  Thackeray  could  no 
more  match  than  he  could  match  the  epic  chapters 
wherethrough  Gerard  adventures  with  Denys  of  Bur- 
gundy, though  between  the  two  novelists,  on  the  sum 
of  their  writing,  there  can  be,  of  course,  no  comparison. 
None  the  less,  and  through  all  his  blindfold  mistakes 
—even  through  his  most  amazing  trivialities — Reade 
carries  always  the  indefinable  aura  of  greatness.  Often 
vulgar,  and  not  seldom  ludicrous,  he  is  never  petty. 
"No  man, "  said  Johnson,  "was  ever  written  down  but 
by  himself."  Reade,  vain  and  apt  to  write  himself 
down  in  the  act  of  writing  himself  up,  was  all  but  con- 
sistently the  worse  foe  of  his  own  reputation.  It  will 
probably  survive  all  the  worst  he  did,  because  he  was 
great  in  a  way,  and  entirely  sincere. 


PATRIOTISM   IN  ENGLISH 
LITERATURE.    I. 


D  Y  those  who  do  not  understand  Socratic  irony,  or 
J— '  the  delicacies  of  it  as  rendered  by  Plato,  a  great 
deal  of  obtuse  criticism  has  been  wasted  upon  the 
Menexenus,  which  is  a  dialogue  purporting  to  be  a  true 
account  by  Socrates  of  a  funeral  oration  composed  to  be 
recited  over  certain  of  the  Athenian  dead  who  fell  in  the 
Peloponnesian  war.  Let  me  sketch  the  introduction  : 
Socrates  happens  on  his  friend  Menexenus,  returning 
from  the  Agora .  ' '  Where  have  you  been ,  Menexenus  ? ' ' 
"At  the  Council,  where  they  were  to  choose  some  one 
to  pronounce  the  customary  oration  over  the  dead;  for 
there  is  to  be  a  public  funeral.  But  the  meeting 
adjourned  without  deciding  on  the  orator."  "O 
Menexenus,  death  in  battle  is  a  fine  thing.  The  poor 
fellow,  however  poor  he  was,  gets  a  costly  funeral  and  an 
elaborate  speech  by  a  wise  man  who  has  prepared  it  long 
beforehand.  He  is  praised  for  what  he  has  done  and  for 
what  he  has  not  done — that  is  the  beauty  of  it.  And  the 
speaker  so  steals  away  our  souls,  Menexenus,  that  I — 
standing  and  listening — feel  myself  a  finer  fellow  than 
ever  I  have  been ;  and,  if  there  be  any  foreigners  present, 
I  am  made  conscious  of  a  certain  superiority  over  them, 
i9  289 


290  Studies  in  Literature 

and  they  seem  to  experience  a  corresponding  awe  of  me, 
and  in  fact  it  takes  me  about  three  days  to  get  over  it." 
"You  are  always  poking  fun  at  us,  Socrates.  But  what 
will  the  poor  fellow — I  mean  the  orator — have  to  say, 
at  so  short  a  notice?"  "Oh,  that's  easy.  If  a  speaker 
had  to  praise  Athenians  among  Peloponnesians,  or  Pelo- 
ponnesians  among  Athenians,  he  might  have  some  ado 
to  gain  credit.  But  where's  his  difficulty  to  win  applause 
among  the  very  people  whom  he  is  praising? "  "Could 
you  do  it,  Socrates?" — "Well,  yes,  I  have  hopes  I  could 
praise  Athenians  to  Athenians ;  and  the  more  because  I 
can  recollect  almost  word  for  word  a  funeral  oration  I 
heard  Aspasia  compose,  only  last  night,  on  these  very 
dead,  putting  together  fragments  of  a  famous  funeral 
oration  which  Pericles  spoke,  but  (as  I  believe)  she 
composed  for  him. " 

Then  follows  the  oration,  carefully  absurd  in  its  dates, 
obviously  travestied  from  Pericles'  famous  speech  as 
conjectured  for  him  by  Thucydides.  And  the  German 
scholars  solemnly  doubt  (although  Aristotle  happens  to 
quote  the  dialogue  as  Plato's)  how  the  thing  can  be 
Plato's,  seeing  it  is  so  very  like  Thucydides:  and  why 
Plato — a  serious  philosopher — should  put  it  into  the 
mouth  of  Aspasia,  of  all  people !  They  incline  to  think 
it  spurious,  on  internal  evidence:  which  means,  the 
evidence  of  their  internals. 

We  must  not  suppose,  however,  because  Plato,  speak- 
ing through  the  mouth  of  Socrates,  lets  his  irony  play 
like  summer  lightning  around  these  patriotic  encomia 
upon  the  dead,  that  therefore  he  was  no  true  patriot,  or 
anything  less  than  a  fervent  one.  For,  first,  observe 
that  what  he  so  gently  derides  is  ready-made  patriotism 
kept  in  stock  and  vended  to  order — the  sort  of  thing 
that  in  a  later  age  constrained  Dr.  Johnson  to  utter 


Patriotism  in  English  Literature       291 

suddenly  in  a  strong  determined  tone  the  apophthegm, 
"Patriotism  is  the  last  refuge  of  a  scoundrel."  Plato 
more  urbanely  suggests  that  it  appertains  to  the  stock- 
in-trade  of  a  good  many  humbugs.  Now  it  was  a  great 
part  of  the  service  rendered  to  mankind  by  the  Greek 
intellect  (and  specially  by  the  Athenian  intellect)  that  it 
insisted  on  penetrating  humbug,  to  see  things  as  they 
are,  and  so  has  helped  men  ever  since  to  separate  true 
things  from  false. — "0  Athenian  stranger — mere  in- 
habitant of  Attica  I  will  not  call  you,  but  you  seem  to 
deserve  rather  the  name  of  Athene  herself,  because  you 
go  back  to  first  principles"  (Plato,  The  Laws}.  It  does 
not  follow,  because  Plato  slily  derides  the  sort  of  stuff 
Archinus  or  Dion  would  have  turned  out  in  imitation  of 
Pericles,  that  he  would  not  be  profoundly  moved  by  the 
great  oration  which  (put  into  Pericles'  mouth  by  Thu- 
cydides)  has  moved  the  souls  of  men  for  two  thousand 
years.1  It  does  not  follow  from  Plato's  irony  that  he 
was  a  man  likely  to  be  left  un thrilled  by  a  speech  which 
stands  to  this  day  as  the  locus  classicus  of  patriotism. 
Rather,  the  contrary  follows.  He  is  separating  the  true 
from  the  spurious  imitation  served  out  by  second-rate 
rhetoricians. 

Lastly,  on  this  point  let  me  recall  to  some  of  you  a 
word  or  two  spoken  in  a  previous  lecture,  on  the  sub- 


1  Here  may  I  interpose  a  warning  that  you  do  not  hastily  take  it, 
as  some  do,  for  Thucydides'  own  composition.  On  other  speeches 
in  the  History  he  may  have  practised  freely  the  art  of  dressing-up  to 
which  he  pleads  guilty.  But  of  so  glorious  a  speech  as  that  every  sen- 
tence would  sink  into  the  hearers'  hearts.  Thucydides  must  have  had 
a  hundred  memories  from  which  to  collate  it;  and — what  is  more- 
he  could  not  only  have  found  it  hard,  in  the  "faking,"  to  rise  so  far 
above  his  habitual  style,  but  he  could  hardly  have  dared  to  foist  new 
sentences  of  his  own  in  place  of  those  which  the  occasion  had  left 
"familiar  in  men's  mouths  as  household  words. " 


292  Studies  in  Literature 

ject  of  parody.  If  a  man's  mind  be  accustomed,  as 
Plato's  was,  to  move  reverently  among  holy  things  and 
so  that  his  appreciation  of  them  has  become  a  second 
nature,  he  can  afford  (whether  he  speak  of  poetry,  or  of 
art,  or  of  religion)  to  play  with  his  adored  one  even  as 
a  tactful  lover  may  tease  his  mistress,  and  the  pair  of 
them  find  in  it  a  pretty  refreshment  of  love.  For  he 
knows  exactly  where  to  stop,  as  she  what  to  allow.  So 
— to  come  to  modern  times  for  an  instance — you  re- 
spond to  every  noble  phrase  in  Abraham  Lincoln's 
oration  over  the  dead  pf  Gettysburg : 

We  have  come  to  dedicate  a  portion  of  that  field  as  a  final 
resting  place  for  those  who  have  given  their  lives  that  a 
nation  might  live.  It  is  altogether  fitting  and  proper  that 
we  should  do  this. 

But  in  a  larger  sense  we  cannot  dedicate,  we  cannot  con- 
secrate, we  cannot  hallow  this  ground.  The  brave  men, 
living  and  dead,  who  struggled  here  have  consecrated  it  far 
above  our  power  to  add  or  detract.  The  world  will  little 
note,  nor  long  remember,  what  we  say  here;  but  it  can  never 
forget  what  they  did  here.  It  is  for  us,  the  living,  rather  to 
be  dedicated  here  to  the  unfinished  work  which  they  who 
fought  here  have  thus  far  so  nobly  advanced. 

"The  world  will  little  note,  nor  long  remember,  what 
we  say  here;  but  it  can  never  forget  what  they  did 
here. "  The  more  intimately  you  respond  to  this — the 
more  sensitively  you  feel,  with  the  thrill  of  the  old  Peri- 
clean  antithesis,  that  here,  after  so  many  generations, 
the  world  has  thrown  up,  in  Abraham  Lincoln,  a  man 
worthy  to  speak  to  it  once  again  as  Pericles  spoke — with 
the  lighter  courage  you  can  consign  all  spurious  or 
second-rate  imitations  to  the  caressing  raillery  of  Mr. 
Dooley. 


Patriotism  in  English  Literature      293 
II 

It  may  seem  a  long  way — even  a  longer  way  than  to 
Tipperary — from  the  polite  irony  of  Menexenus  to  the 
cheerful  irony  of  the  English  private  soldier,  now  fight- 
ing for  us  on  the  Belgian  border.  But  I  suggest  to  you 
that  his  irony  too  plays  with  patriotism  just  because  he 
is  at  home  with  that  holy  spirit ;  so  much  at  home  that 
he  may  be  called  at  any  hour  of  the  day  or  night  to  die 
for  it.  Precisely  because  he  lives  in  this  intimacy,  he  is 
shy  of  revealing  it,  and  from  shy  turns  to  scornful  when 
the  glib  uninitiate  would  vulgarise  the  mystery: 

Send  for  the  army  and  the  navy, 
Send  for  the  rank  and  file — 
(Have  a  banana !) 

A  well-meaning  scholar,  having  written,  the  other 
day,  for  the  British  infantry-man  a  number  of  ditties  to 
which  he  will  never  march,  protested  that  if  he  pre- 
ferred to  march  to  this  sort  of  thing,  his  laureate  should 
be  the  village  idiot ;  which  pleased  me,  who  have  al- 
ways contended  that  the  village  idiot  has  his  uses,  and 
that  Mr.  McKenna  was  far  too  hasty  with  his  Mental 
Deficiency  Act. 

There  is  a  real  mental  deficiency — and  most  of  us 
who  work  on  recruiting  committees  have  bitter  experi- 
ence of  it — in  well-intentioned  superior  persons  who, 
with  no  prospect  of  dying  for  their  country,  are  calling 
on  others  to  make  that  sacrifice.  On  platform  after 
platform  since  August  I  have  sat  and  seen  the  ardour 
of  young  men  chilled  by  exhortations  from  intellectual 
speakers  who  lacked  understanding,  by  middle-aged 
people— sentimental  or  patronising— who  schooled  their 


294  Studies  in  Literature 

hearers  in  what  they  ought  to  feel.  To  the  British 
soldier  Tipperary  was,  if  you  will,  just  Tipperary:  to 
some  of  us  who  heard  him  singing  and  know  what  he 
went  forth  to  find,  it  remains  a  city  celestial. 

After  this  it  was  noised  about  that  Mr.  Valiant-for-truth 
was  taken  with  a  Summons.  .  .  .  Then  said  he,  I  am  going 
to  my  Father's;  and  tho'  with  great  Difficulty  I  am  got 
hither,  yet  now  I  do  not  repent  me  of  all  the  Trouble  I  have 
been  at  to  arrive  where  I  am.  My  Sword,  I  give  to  him  that 
shall  succeed  me  in  my  Pilgrimage,  and  my  Courage  and 
Skill,  to  him  that  can  get  it.  My  Marks  and  Scarrs  I  carry 
with  me,  to  be  a  witness  for  me,  that  I  have  fought  his 
Battles,  who  now  will  be  my  Rewarder. 

When  the  Day  that  he  must  go  hence  was  come,  many 
accompanied  him  to  the  River  side,  into  which,  as  he  went, 
he  said,  Death,  where  is  thy  Sting?  And  as  he  went  down 
deeper,  he  said,  Grave,  where  is  thy  Victory?  So  he 
passed  over,  and  the  Trumpets  sounded  for  him  on  the 
other  side. 

(The  Pilgrim's  Progress) 

But  there  are  serious  good  folk  who  would  paraphrase 

Good-bye,  Piccadilly, 
Farewell,  Leicester  Square 
into 

Good-bye ,  Self-indulgence ! 
Farewell,  the  soft  arm-chair! 

and  to  these  the  British  infantry-man  responds 
Have  a  banana! 

Yes;  and  truly  (when  one  comes  to  think)  it  were  hard 
to  find,  in  few  words,  a  better  answer. 


Patriotism  in  English  Literature       295 

Send  for  the  boys  of  the  girls'  brigade 

To  set  old  England  free: 
Send  for  my  mother,  and  my  sister  and  my  brother, 

But  for  heaven's  sake  don't  send  me! 

That  is  "merry  England."  The  enemy  wonders  that 
our  men  march — and  so  obstinately  too — to  this  stuff 
while  by  rights  they  should  be  chanting  Rule,  Britannia!: 
and  it  would  seem  that  not  a  few  cultivated  Englishmen, 
who  of  late  years  have  lent  too  much  of  their  minds 
to  Germanic  ways  of  thought,  suffer  from  an  uneasy 
suspicion  that  we  ought  to  be  answering  the  perpetual 
Deutschland  uber alles! 'with  a  perpetual  Rule, Britannia!. 
Nay,  the  late  Professor  Cramb — who  felt  the  German 
hypnotism  none  the  less  for  resenting  it — conveys  the 
reproach  in  passages  like  this : 

It  is  hard  for  us  in  England  to  understand  what  the  Rhine 
really  means  for  a  German,  the  enthusiasm  which  he  feels  for 
that  River.  Treitschke  himself  says  of  it,  for  instance,  when 
he  has  to  leave  Bonn:  "Tomorrow  I  shall  see  the  Rhine  for 
the  last  time.  The  memory  of  that  noble  river" — and  this 
is  net  in  a  poem,  observe,  but  simply  in  a  letter  to  a  friend — 
"the  memory  of  that  noble  river  will  keep  my  heart  pure 
and  save  me  from  sad  and  evil  thoughts  throughout  all  the 
days  of  my  life. "  Try  [writes  Professor  Cramb]  to  imagine 
anyone  saying  that  of  the  Thames! 

Well,  I  daresay  some  Old  Etonians  have  felt  something 
like  that  about  the  Thames,  and  have  confessed  it  in 
private  letters.  But  how  could  Professor  Cramb  have 
missed  to  see  that  when  we  Englishmen  lift  our  thoughts 
to  their  stature,  our  Rhine  is  not  the  Thames  ?  Come, 
I  will  answer  for  once  with  a  Rule,  Britannia!  Our 
Rhine,  our  king's  frontier,  is  no  Thames  but  the  royal 
sweep  of  seven  oceans.  The  waters  of  our  baptism  flow 


296  Studies  in  Literature 

past  Dover  through  the  Straits  of  Hercules,  down  past 
the  Cape  of  Storms,  to  divide  again  to  reach,  to  coast, 
to  claim  Hindostan,  Australia.  There  (if  you  will  have 
it  so)  runs  our  Rhine:  our  Bonn  and  Bingen  and 
Drachenfels  are  the  Heads  of  Sydney,  the  ramparts 
of  Quebec,  the  citadel  rock  of  Gibraltar: 

rock  which  Hercules 

And  Goth  and  Moor  bequeathed  us.     At  this  door 
England  stands  sentry.     God!  to  hear  the  shrill 
Sweet  treble  of  her  fifes  upon  the  breeze, 
And  at  the  summons  of  the  rock  gun's  roar 
To  see  her  red  coats  marching  from  the  hill ! 


Ill 


But — to  be  fair — let  us  admit  that  we  do  not  often 
open  our  hearts  in  this  fashion.  I  suppose  that  if 
England  ever  bred  a  great  "imperialist"  in  days  before 
our  language  had  coined  that  unbeautiful  word,  his 
name  was  Sir  Walter  Ralegh  and  he  has  left  us,  in  noble 
verse,  a  reminder  that 

Passions  are  liken'd  best  to  floods  and  streams: 
The  shallow  murmur,  but  the  deep  are  dumb. 

I  trust — as  I  believe — this  to  be  the  explanation  why 
we,  who  seek  in  English  literature  for  the  passion  of 
patriotism,  have  to  pride  ourselves  on  its  being  every- 
where implicit.  To  be  sure  the  patriotic  orator  can 
always  quote  to  us  the  lines  of  dying  Gaunt : 

This  royal  throne  of  kings,  this  sceptr'd  isle,  .  .  . 
This  happy  breed  of  men,  this  little  world, 
This  precious  stone  set  in  the  silver  sea, 


Patriotism  in  English  Literature      297 

Which  serves  it  in  the  office  of  a  wall 

Or  as  a  moat  defensive  to  a  house, 

Against  the  envy  of  less  happier  lands, 

This  blessed  plot,  this  earth,  this  realm,  this  England, 

or  the  Bastard's  equally  famous  conclusion: 

Come  the  three  corners  of  the  world  in  arms, 

And  we  shall  shock  them.     Nought  shall  make  us  rue, 

If  England  to  itself  do  rest  but  true. 

Yet  I  think  it  observable  that  the  one  speech  is  put  into 
the  mouth  of  a  febrile  and  dying  man  while  the  other 
rounds  off  a  play  with  obvious  declamation:  and  yet 
more  observable  that  whereas  the  body  of  Shakespeare's 
work  is  a  whole  school  in  itself  of  patriotic  thought  and 
feeling,  more  than  nine-tenths  of  it  is  implicit;  after 
King  Henry  the  Fifth  almost  the  whole  of  it  is  implicit. 

Certainly  if  we  turn  to  the  body  of  English  poetry 
we  shall  find  explicit,  loud-mouthed  patriotism  even 
worse  represented  than  is  our  pride  in  sea-power,  that 
particular  glory  of  our  birth  and  "state.  When  we 
happen  to  talk  of  our  country,  we  are  at  one,  or  almost 
at  one.  It  is  only  Bubb  Dodington  who  can  write : 

Love  thy  country,  wish  it  well, 
Not  with  too  intense  a  care: 

'Tis  enough  that,  when  it  fell, 
Thou  its  ruin  didst  not  share. 

It  is  true — nay,  it  is  part  of  my  argument — that  when 
an  Englishman  talks  of  art,  of  literature,  of  philosophy 
(I  fear  me,  even  of  theology),  some  solid  sense  of  his 
country's  dignity  is  usually  discoverable  at  the  back  of 
his  mind.  We  feel  this  solid  background,  for  example, 


298  Studies  in  Literature 

all  the  while  we  are  reading  Coleridge's  Biographic, 
Literaria:  in  a  metaphysical  passage  of  De  Quincey, 
as  through  parted  clouds,  suddenly  will  come  charging 
the  British  dragoons  of  Talavera;  while  Dryden  opens 
his  famous  Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy  with  the  sound  of 
our  navy's  gunnery: 

It  was  that  memorable  day,  in  the  first  summer  of  the  late 
war,  when  our  navy  engaged  the  Dutch;  a  day  wherein  the 
two  most  mighty  and  best  appointed  fleets  which  any  age 
had  ever  seen,  disputed  the  command  of  the  greater  half  of 
the  globe.  .  .  .  While  these  vast  floating  bodies,  on  either 
side,  moved  against  each  other  in  parallel  lines,  and  our 
countrymen,  under  the  happy  conduct  of  his  Royal  High- 
ness, went  breaking  by  little  and  little  into  the  line  of  the 
enemies;  the  noise  of  cannon  from  both  navies  reached  our 
ears  about  the  City,  so  that  all  men  being  alarmed  with  it, 
and  in  a  dreadful  suspense  of  the  event  which  we  knew  was 
then  deciding,  everyone  went  following  the  sound  as  his 
fancy  led  him;  and  leaving  the  town  almost  empty,  some 
took  towards  the  park,  some  cross  the  river,  others  down  it; 
all  seeking  the  noise  in  the  depth  of  silence. 

He  goes  on  to  narrate  how  in  company  with  three 
gentlemen,  "whom  their  wit  and  quality  have  made 
known  to  all  the  town, "  he  took  barge  down  through 
the  crowded  merchant-shipping  to  Greenwich,  where 
the  four  listened  as  the  air  broke  about  them  in  little 
undulations  of  sound  "like  the  noise  of  distant  thunder, 
or  of  swallows  in  a  chimney,"  until,  as  "by  little  and 
little,"  it  fell  more  distant,  one  of  the  four,  lifting  his 
head,  congratulated  the  others  on  that  happy  omen  of 
victory,  adding  the  devout  wish  "that  we  might  hear 
no  more  of  that  noise,  which  was  now  leaving  the 
English  coast." 

Thus  Dryden  prefaces  a  really  profound  conversation 


Patriotism  in  English  Literature      299 

upon  Poetry.  Now  you  will  not  easily  find  a  better 
combination  of  poet  and  true  Englishman  than  in 
Dryden;  and  if  you  would  seek  the  true  patriotic  in  our 
literature,  you  must  seek  it  in  passages  such  as  the  one 
I  have  quoted;  not  in  your  hearty  Rule,  Britannias ! 
Deaths  of  Nelson,  or  Battles  of  the  Baltic,  where  senti- 
ment infallibly  overstrains  itself  and  on  the  azure  main 
Britons  do  their  duty  for  England,  home  and  beauty, 
and  the  mermaid's  song  condoles,  while  the  mournful 
billow  rolls  in  a  melody^of  souls,  and  the  might  of  Eng- 
land rushes  to  anticipate  the  scene — Which  is  pretty, 
but  whatever  can  it  mean  ? 


IV 


We  have  no  great  national  epic  like  the  Aeneid, 
none  written  to  extol  the  British  empire,  the  men  who 
founded,  built  it,  gave  their  lives  for  it.  Our  greatest 
epic,  Paradise  Lost,  really  has  one  point  of  resemblance 
with  our  old  friend  Beowulf,  in  that  as  Stopford  Brooke 
once  sagely  observed  "there  is  not  one  word  about  our 
England"  in  either  poem. 

No:  but  wait!  Let  us  (as  I  have  preached  to  you 
more  than  once  from  this  desk)  constantly  refer  our 
minds  back  to  Rome,  habitually  consult  with  Latin 
literature  upon  any  question  which  puzzles  us  for  the 
moment  concerning  our  literature  in  character  or  origin. 

We  have  no  Aeneid.  But  open  your  Horace.  You 
may  or  may  not  agree  off-hand  with  what  I  am  going 
to  say :  but  to  me  Horace  has  always  seemed  far  more 
patriotic  in  grain  than  Virgil — as  it  has  always  seemed 
to  me  that  (Burke's  rhetoric  discounted)  Horace  Wai- 
pole  was  in  his  way  as  good  a  patriot  as  Burke  and  at 


300  Studies  in  Literature 

least  as  clear-sighted.  But  open  your  Horace,  and  turn 
the  Odes,  page  after  page.  Familiar  as  they  may  be  to 
you,  I  think  you  will  be  amazed  to  note  how  thickly 
sown  they  are  with  names  of  nations,  tribes,  countries — 
east,  west,  south  and  north.  Asia,  Scythia,  Parthia, 
Numidia,  Dacia,  Dalmatia,  the  passes  of  the  Alps  and 
the  Tyrol — over  which  Rome  was  spreading  conquest 
in  Horace's  day  and  establishing  the  Pax  Romana.  No- 
thing of  foreign  affairs  would  appear  to  escape  him, 
and  always  his  pride  in  Rome  (unlike  Virgil's)  is  quick, 
alert,  practical:  as  not  seldom  it  is  lofty,  and  never 
less  than  absolutely  sincere. 

Why  does  Horace's  patriotism  ring  so  true  ?  Because, 
if  we  search  to  the  heart  of  it,  we  shall  find  that  very 
heart,  not  in  the  Forum  or  the  boulevard  of  the  Via 
Sacra,  but  in  his  Sabine  farm.  The  Forum  and  the  Via 
Sacra  intrigued  him,  as  the  French  say ;  but  as  Piccadilly 
or  Whitehall  or  his  club  in  Pall  Mall  intrigues  an 
Englishman,  who  yet  knows  all  the  while  that  these  are 
but  arteries;  that  for  the  true  source  that  feeds  them, 
the  spirit  that  clarifies,  he  must  seek  home  to  a  green 
nook  of  his  youth  in  Yorkshire  or  Derbyshire,  Shrop- 
shire or  Kent  or  Devon;  where  the  folk  are  slow,  but 
there  is  seed-time  and  harvest  and  "pure  religion 
breathing  household  laws. " 

I  challenge  you  that  here  lies  the  heart  of  Horace's 
patriotism.  He  looks  abroad  (though  he  warns  Quinc- 
tius  against  the  habit)  eagerly  watching 

Quid  bellicosus  Cantaber  et  Scythes 

.  .  .  cogiter  .  .  . 

And  what  the  Swede  intend,  and  what  the  French  .  .  . 

but,  for  trust  to  confound  their  politics,  he  draws  home 
to  the  Sabine  lads — rusticorum  mascula  militum  proles — 


Patriotism  in  English  Literature      301 

shouldering  logs  for  their  mother's  hearth;  and  to  their 
mother  herself,  rustic  Phidyle,  paying  her  vows  to  the 
new  moon,  and  her  devoirs  to  the  gods  with  a  handful 
of  meal  and  salt. 


Now  as  in  a  former  lecture,  Gentlemen,1  I  warned 
you  that  to  a  Greek — even  to  an  Aristophanes — his  gods 
mattered  enormously;  as,  coming  to  Rome,  we  saw  that 
a  Roman  general  on  active  service  abroad  would  carry 
with  him,  packed  in  mule  pannier,  the  tessellae  of  a  small 
sacred  pavement,  that,  wherever  he  encamped,  his  feet 
might  rest  on  these  holy  pictures  of  his  gods ;  so  I  warn 
you  here  that  you  will  never  understand  what  patriot- 
ism meant  to  a  Roman  unless  you  connect  it  with  the  old 
religious  usage  of  Latium,  with  Lar  and  Terminus  and 
other  gods  of  field  and  garden,  orchard  and  hearth : 

At  mihi  contingat  patrios  celebrare  Penates, 
Reddereque  antique  menstrua  thura  Lari. 

The  feeling  of  this,  should  the  originals  be  closed  to 
you,  you  may  yet  find  exquisitely  conveyed  in  the  first 
chapter  of  Pater's  Marius  the  Epicurean,  describing  how 
the  lad  Marius  attended  the  private  annual  rites  of  the 
Ambarvalia,  of  "the  religion  of  Numa, "  in  his  country 
home,  and  how  they  impressed  the  boy's  mind: 

At  the  appointed  time  all  work  ceases;  the  instruments  of 
labour  lie  untouched,  hung  with  wreaths  of  flowers,  while 
masters  and  servants  together  go  in  solemn  procession  along 
the  dry  paths  of  vineyard  and  cornfield,  conducting  the 
victims  whose  blood  is  presently  to  be  shed  for  the  puri- 
fication from  all  natural  or  supernatural  taint  of  the  lands 
they  have  "gone  about.".  .  .  Early  on  that  day  the  girls 

'  On  the  Art  of  Writing,  pp.  192-3,  Cambridge  University  Press,  1916. 


302  Studies  in  Literature 

of  the  farm  had  been  busy  in  the  great  portico,  filling  large 
baskets  with  flowers  plucked  short  from  branches  of  apple 
and  cherry,  then  in  spacious  bloom,  to  strew  before  the 
quaint  images  of  the  gods — Ceres  and  Bacchus  and  the  yet 
more  mysterious  Dea  Dia — as  they  passed  through  the 
fields,  carried  in  their  little  houses  on  the  shoulders  of  white- 
clad  youths,  who  were  understood  to  proceed  to  this  office  in 
perfect  temperance.  .  .  .  The  clean  lustral  water  and  the 
full  incense-box  were  carried  after  them. 

Then,  Silence!  Favete  linguis,  before  the  small  homely 
shrines!  No  name  in  the  great  populace  of  the  "little 
gods"  dear  to  the  Roman  home,  was  forgotten  in  the 
long  Litany: 

Vatican  who  causes  the  infant  to  utter  his  first  cry,  Fabu- 
linus  who  prompts  his  first  word,  Cuba  who  keeps  him  quiet 
in  his  cot,  Domiduca  especially,  for  whom  Marius  had 
through  life  a  particular  memory  and  devotion,  the  goddess 
who  watches  over  one's  safe  coming  home. 

Favete  linguis!  As  the  procession  halted  before  each 
small  shrine,  Marius  (we  are  told)  strove  to  answer  this 
impressive  outward  silence  of  the  ritual  by  hushing 
his  own  boyish  heart  to  that  inward  tacitness  which 
religious  Romans  held  due  to  holy  things.  And  its 
comfort  came  back  as  he  lay  down  to  sleep  that  night 
after  the  long  day's  ceremonies: 

To  procure  an  agreement  with  the  gods — Pacem  deorum 
exposcere:  that  was  the  meaning  of  what  they  had  all  day 
been  busy  upon.  In  a  faith,  sincere  but  half-suspicious,  he 
would  fain  have  those  powers  at  least  not  against  him.  His 
own  nearer  household  gods  were  all  around  his  bed. 

"His  own  nearer  household  gods  were  all  around  his 
bed. ' '  Hark,  think  for  a  moment,  and  catch  the  English 
echo,  out  of  your  own  childhood : 


Patriotism  in  English  Literature      303 

Four  corners  to  my  bed, 

Four  angels  round  my  head.  .  .  . 

Follow  that  echo  back,  and  tell  me  this.  When  you 
think  of  the  real  England  in  English  poetry — of  her 
heart,  her  meaning,  her  secret — nay  even  her  glory — as 
our  singers  have  come  nearest  to  expressing  one  or  the 
other  or  all  of  these,  do  you  think  of  Rule,  Britannia  !, 
or  Ye  Mariners  of  England?  Does  not  whatever  is 
in  your  heart  lift  rather  to  some  casual  careless  line- — 
maybe  even  some  foolish-seeming  line  such  as  Chaucer's 

Wite  ye  nat  where  ther  stant  a  litel  toun 
Which  that  y-clepM  is  Bob-up-and-down 
Under  the  Blee? 
Or  this: 

Me  liketh  ever,  the  longer  the  bet 

By  Wingestre,  that  joly  cite; 

The  town  is  good  and  well  y-set, 

The  folk  is  comely  for  to  se. 

Benedicamus  Domino  ! 

Or  this  of  Robin  Hood  returning  in  old  age  to  merry 
Sherwood : 

When  he  came  to  greene-wood 

In  a  merry  morning, 
There  he  heard  the  notes  small 

Of  birds  merry  singing. 

"It  is  far  gone,"  said  Robin  Hood, 

"That  I  was  latest  here; 
Me  list  a  little  for  to  shoot 

At  the  dunne  deer." 
Or  again : 

O  Brignall  banks  are  wild  and  fair 

And  Greta  woods  are  green. 


304  Studies  in  Literature 

Or: 

Tis  pretty  to  be  by  Balinderry 

'Tis  pretty  to  be  by  Balindoon. 
Or: 

The  bells  of  Shandon 
That  sound  so  grand  on 

The  pleasant  waters 

Of  the  river  Lea. 
Or: 

Clunton  and  Clunbury^ 

Clungunford  and  Clun, 
Are  the  quietest  places 

Under  the  sun. 

Or  if  it  be  a  strip  of  meadow-land,  with  "daisies  pied  and 
violets  blue":  or  if  a  village  "where  bells  have  knolled 
to  church":  or  if  it  be  but  "Scarlet  town  where  I  was 
born  " :  or  if  it  be  London  herself,  "  of  townes  A  per  se  " : 

O!  towne  of  townes,  patrone  and  not  compare 

where  John  Gilpin  keeps  shop  and  Izaak  Walton  sallies 
an-angling,  to  stretch  his  legs  up  Tottenham,  and  all 
the  way  with  the  voice  of  the  Psalmist  running  in  his 
head: 

He  maketh  me  to  lie  down  in  green  pastures:  he  leadeth 
me  beside  the  still  waters.  .  .  . 

it  is  thus,  and  incurably  thus,  that  we  see  England ;  as 
it  was  thus  that  Horace,  the  true  Roman,  saw  Italy: 
and  though  in  Britain 

Today  the  Roman  and  his  trouble 
Are  ashes  under  Uricon 

we  keep  the  lesson  learnt.  Other  nations  extend,  or 
would  extend,  their  patriotism  over  large  spaces  super- 


Patriotism  in  English  Literature      305 

ficially :  ours  (or  so  much  of  it  as,  in  Meredith's  phrase, 
is  "accepted  of  song")  ever  cuts  down  through  the 
strata  for  its  well-springs,  intensifies  itself  upon  that 
which,  untranslatable  to  the  foreigner,  is  comprised 
for  us  in  a  single  easy  word — Home.  We  do  not,  in  our 
true  hours — as  all  our  glorious  poetry  attests — brag  of 
England  as  a  world-power,  actual  or  potential.  Blame 
it  who  will  upon  our  insularity,  we  do  habitually  narrow 
and  intensify  our  national  passion  upon  the  home  and 
the  hearths  now  to  be  defended.  And  I  say  this,  who 
said  just  now  that  our  Rhine  was  seven  seas. 


PATRIOTISM  IN  ENGLISH 
LITERATURE.    II. 


WE  talked  last  time,  Gentlemen,  of  a  certain  shyness 
— often  translating  itself  into  irony — shared  by 
our  nation  with  great  nations  of  the  past  when  it  comes 
to  talking  of  that  sacred  emotion,  love  of  one's  country. 
In  ordinary  social  life  we  know  that  a  well-bred  man 
naturally  inclines  to  let  his  ancestry  (or  his  rank;  or 
his  riches,  if  he  have  them ;  or  any  personal  distinction 
he  has  won)  go  silently  for  granted;  not  undervaluing 
them,  but  taught  to  see  them  in  their  true  value  as  gifts 
at  the  best  held  in  trusteeship  from  the  gods.  We  know 
the  instinct  of  such  a  man  towards  his  fellows;  that  it 
is  constantly  courteous,  that  it  never  says  or  seems  to 
say,  "  I  am  as  good  as  you, "  but  always  prefers  the  im- 
plication, "You  are  as  good  as  I."  We  know  that  he 
keeps  his  heart  as  a  mirror  for  other  men's  feelings, 
lest  he  should  wound  them;  that  even  in  controversy 
(as  Newman  says)  his  disciplined  intellect  is  candid, 
considerate,  indulgent,  since  he  throws  himself  into  the 
minds  of  his  opponents  and  accounts  for  their  mistakes. 
So  a  nation  such  as  France,  or  England,  whose  title- 
deeds  time  can  no  longer  question,  may  cherish  indeed 
certain  inveterate  foibles — even  certain  inveterate  vices 
306 


Patriotism  in  English  Literature      307 

of  character — which  its  fellows  will  smile  at  or  deplore : 
but  it  will  long  ago  have  realised  that  it  cannot  have 
the  moon,  that  (as  the  saying  is)  all  sorts  go  to  make 
a  world,  that  civilised  men  must  give  and  take.  It  will 
long  ago  have  rid  itself  of  bumptiousness,  of  that  itch 
for  self-assertion  which  is  the  root-bane  of  good  manners. 

Now  the  general  good  manners  of  Europe  have  been 
vexed  for  a  generation  by  a  people,  raw  in  character 
and  uncouth  of  speech,  which  has  prospered  by  dint 
of  bravery  to  a  very  high  degree.  Having  prospered 
beyond  hope  by  this  pugnacious  self-assertion,  it  has 
set  itself  since  1870  not  only  to  philosophise  its  primi- 
tive instincts  but  to  impose  that  philosophy  upon  the 
civilised  nations  into  whose  circle  it  had  so  compla- 
cently forced  a  seat. 

"The  be-all  and  end-all  of  a  State  is  Power"— "True 
Patriotism  consists  in  Self-assertiveness " — "What  we 
want,  it  follows  that  we  must  have" — I  will  not  weary 
you,  today,  Gentlemen,  with  confuting  this  doctrine. 
Long  ago,  on  a  hot  day  in  a  courtyard  in  Athens, 
Thrasymachus  announced  it,  rehearsing  all  the  advan- 
tages of  the  unjust  man;  and  was  laid  on  his  back, 
wondering  what  had  happened. 


II 

The  high  teaching  of  the  world  was  not  to  be  put 
down  by  Thrasymachus,  in  his  day,  and  is  not  to  be 
put  down  in  ours  by  the  neo-Darwmists  who  teach  that 
life,  for  nations  as  for  individuals,  is  a  kind  of  dog-fight, 
and  its  object  self-assertion.  Christ  at  any  rate  taught 
that  he  who  would  save  his  soul  must  first  lose  it:  and 
that  doctrine  informs  good  literature,  even  down  to  the 
artless  self -surrender  of  our  own  Nut  Browne  Mayde: 


308  Studies  in  Literature 

Sith  I  have  here  been  partynere 

With  you  of  joy  and  bliss, 
I  must  als6  part  of  your  woe 

Endure,  as  reason  is: 
Yet  I  am  sure  of  one  pleasure, 

And  shortly  it  is  this — 
That  where  ye  be,  me  seem'th,  parde, 

I  could  not  fare  amiss. 

In  good  literature,  as  in  the  Gospel,  the  self-assertor 
is,  like  Malvolio,  a  self-deceiver.  "What  is  a  man 
profited,  if  he  shall  gain  the  whole  world,  and  lose  his 
own  soul  ?  "  "  Love  thy  neighbour  as  thyself. "  "  This 
law,"  says  a  much-quoted  German  general,  "can  claim 
no  significance  for  the  relations  of  one  country  to 
another,  since  its  application  to  politics  would  lead  to 
a  conflict  of  duties." 

Believe  me,  a  man  who  talks  like  that  has  been 
educated — that  is  to  say,  has  had  himself  "drawn  out" 
— beyond  his  capacity  to  bear  the  strain.  These  are  no 
times  for  men  to  make  fetishes  of  tall  words,  even  of 
words  so  tall  as  "education"  and  "religion."  These 
are  times  for  clear  sight  into  the  values  of  things. 
Without  clear  thinking  religion  will  not  help  us:  for  a 
stupid  man,  who  cannot  see  clearly  what  he  means  by  it, 
religion  may  easily  be — and  indeed  not  seldom  is — the 
wickedest  influence  in  the  world.  His  heart  will  bleed 
over  Lou  vain  while  he  sacks  it,  and  with  gathering 
confidence  he  will  promise,  so  he  be  allowed  to  do  the 
same  to  Calais,  to  reward  the  Almighty  (Who  knows 
about  crosses)  with  the  decoration  of  an  iron  one.  So 
with  education :  some  men  may  as  easily  have  too  much 
education  as  too  much  religion.  It  is  admittedly  bad 
to  have  none;  it  is  possibly,  nay  certainly,  worse  to  have 
more  than  by  character  or  intelligence  you  are  adapted 


Patriotism  in  English  Literature      309 

for.  It  has  been  the  curse  of  Germany  that,  mistaking 
the  human  end  of  education  and  misconceiving  what 
"power"  means  in  the  saying  "Knowledge  is  Power," 
she  has  strained  herself  to  it  beyond  preparation  of 
ancestry  or  manners. 


Ill 

Now  I  propose  to  examine  for  a  few  minutes  this 
morning,  first  the  rationale,  and  afterwards  some  results, 
of  this  German  self-assertiveness  as  it  has  invaded  in 
our  day  the  field  of  study  with  which  we  here  are 
particularly  concerned — I  mean  the  study  of  English 
literature.  Into  what  error  soever  the  course  of  my 
examination  may  betray  me,  I  at  least  commit  none  in 
starting  from  a  fact  which  is  one  of  common  knowledge 
— that  German  professors  and  scholars  have  invaded 
that  field  with  great  assiduity. 

You  will  not  so  readily  agree — maybe  you  will  not 
agree  at  all — with  what  I  am  going  to  say  next.  But 
I  say  it  nevertheless.  Every  literature  being  written 
in  a  language — every  great  literature  commanding  a 
masterly  style  of  its  own  language  and  appealing  to  an 
almost  infinitely  delicate  acquaintance  with  its  mean- 
ings, an  almost  infinitely  delicate  sense  of  its  sounds, 
even  to  semi-tones  and  demi-semi-tones — no  foreigner 
can  ever  quite  penetrate  to  the  last  excellence  of  an 
unfamiliar  tongue.  I  know  this  to  be  a  hard  saying: 
and  I  utter  it  very  reluctantly  because  it  is  wormwood 
to  me  to  own  myself  congenitally  debarred — though  it 
be  in  common  with  all  modern  men — from  entering  the 
last  shrine  of  beauty  (say)  in  a  chorus  of  Sophocles. 
But  I  am  sure  that  it  is  so.  Lovely  as  we  may  divine 


310  Studies  in  Literature 

the  thrill  to  be  (or  rather  to  have  been  for  those  who  had 
ears  to  hear) — educative  as  it  may  be  even  in  tantalising 
our  thirst — I  am  sure  that  no  modern  Englishman 
can  ever  quite  reach  back  to  the  lilt  of  a  Sophoclean 
chorus;  still  less  to  its  play  of  vowel  notes.  I  doubt 
even  if  by  taking  most  careful  thought  he  can  attain  to 
the  last  beauties  of  a  sonnet  by  Leconte  de  Lisle  or 
Heredia. 

You  may  urge  that,  Latin  and  Greek  being  dead 
languages  which  we  are  agreed  in  various  ways  to  mis- 
pronounce, this  disability  may  apply  to  them,  but  does 
not  extend  to  our  modern  Babel.  I  answer,  first,  that 
if  only  by  structure  of  his  vocal  organs  a  German  is 
congenitally  unable  to  read  our  poetry;  that  his  eye, 
perusing  it,  cannot  translate  it  to  any  part  of  him 
capable  of  reproducing  its  finest  sound.  The  late 
Philip  Gilbert  Hamerton  once  illustrated  this  from  a 
few  lines  of  Tennyson's  Claribel. 

Where  Claribel  low-lieth 
The  breezes  pause  and  die, 

Letting  the  rose-leaves  fall:  ... 

At  eve  the  beetle  boometh 

Athwart  the  thicket  lone:  .  .  . 

The  hollow  grot  replieth 
Where  Claribel  low-lieth. 

Now  to  an  English  critic  with  a  musical  ear  the  whole 
consonantal  secret  of  that  little  poem  resides  in  the 
labials,  with  their  suggestion  of  moonlit  lapsing  water, 
and  the  low  "th"  sounds  in  which  one  feels  the  very 
breath  of  eve  softly  wafted: 

At  eve  the  beetle  boometh 
Athwart  the  thicket  lone. 


Patriotism  in  English  Literature      311 

But  a  German  simply  cannot  compass  the  soft  "th" 
sound.  He  has  to  introduce  his  own  harsh  hiss  upon  the 
twilit  quiet  where  never  a  full  sibilant  was  allowed. 
As  this: 

At  eve  ze  beedle  boomess 
Aswart  ze  zickhead  Ion 

while  as  for  the  continuous  hushed  run  of  the  soft  gut- 
tural to  lip  and  tooth  ("Claribel,"  "throstle,"  "thick- 
leaved  ambrosial,"  "the  hollow  grot")  he  must  rest 
content  with  his  ancestral  habit  which  has  not  yet 
evolved  even  labials  beyond  the  throat:  "Sick-leaved 
ambhrosial: 

Ze  hollo  ghrot  hrepliez 

Hwhere  Chlaribel  blow  hliez. 


IV 

I  say  then  that  it  must  be  extremely  hard  for  any 
German  to  feel  the  last  felicities  of  our  language,  to 
respond  to  its  last,  most  delicate,  harmonies.     I  think 
it  must  be  impossible,  for  (to  use  a  plain  phrase)  I  don't 
see  what  he  has  to  do  it  with.    But  I  will  content  my- 
self with  maintaining  that  he  must  naturally  find  it 
very  hard. r 

And  this  by  no  means  exhausts  the  list  of  his  natural 
disabilities.  We  know  that  many  scholars  have  been 
able  to  write  exquisitely  in  a  dead  language,  or  at  any 

I 1  believe  that  in  a  less,  but  yet  a  very  high,  degree,  a  Frenchman 
finds  this  natural  difficulty  with  English,  and  an  Englishman  with 
French.    Both  of  them  are  far  more  at  home  with  the  simpler  pro- 
nunciation of  Italian.    This,  further,  seems  to  me  a  partial  explana- 
tion of  a  fact  which  few  will  dispute— that  (to  speak  only  of  us  English) 
we  have  in  the  past  understood  Italians  better  than  we  have  understood 
the  French.     In  matters  of  art  and  literature  this  will  hardly  be  denied. 


312  Studies  in  Literature 

rate  to  write  it  in  a  way  that  to  us  seems  exquisite. 
Cambridge  is  rightly  proud  of  a  long  list  of  sons  whose 
lips  in  her  cradle  the  very  bees  of  Hybla  and  of  Hymet- 
tus  have  visited  with  their  honey.  Certain  Frenchmen 
again  (M.  Jusserand  is  a  notable  instance)  have  written 
English  "as  to  the  manner  born" — nervous,  elastic 
English,  with  an  added  grace  of  French  charm.  I 
doubt  if  the  compliment  can,  save  in  politeness,  be 
returned.  Swinburne's  French  poetry,  for  example,  is 
magnificently  eloquent — but  is  it  quite  French?  At  all 
events  the  German  who  can  write  English  of  any  quality 
has  yet,  I  believe,  to  be  found,  unless  we  accept  Max 
Muller's  plastering  for  marble.  To  that  whole  nation 
— or,  if  you  will,  to  that  whole  group  of  nations — our 
language  is  not  only  not  living  but  something  more 
than  dead.  This,  when  you  consider  it,  throws  back 
some  merriment  upon  their  claim  that  we  are — or  shall 
we  say,  have  been — in  some  sense  cousins  of  theirs. 
It  might  appear  that  the  claim  has  been  set  up  on 
grounds  not  entirely  unconnected  with  expectations  of 
a  legacy,  and  that  our  death  has,  as  the  lawyers  say, 
by  our  amiable  relatives  been  somewhat  too  hastily 
presumed. 

Please  understand  that  I  am  not  belittling  the  mass 
of  methodical  and  most  helpful  work  done,  during  the 
last  twenty  or  thirty — nay,  the  past  hundred — years 
by  German  scholars  upon  that  side  of  our  literature 
which  they  are  not  congenitally  precluded  from  under- 
standing. When  this  war  is  over,  I  hope  we  shall 
retain  no  little  gratitude  for  that  service  of  labour, 
while  able  with  clear  eyes  to  see  it  in  its  real  relationship 
to  literature ;  that  is,  in  its  right  place. 

For  (let  us  be  fair)  I  do  not  say,  nor  do  I  believe 
for  a  moment,  in  spite  of  a  long  malignity  now  un- 


Patriotism  in  English  Literature      313 

masked,  the  Germans  have  of  set  purpose  treated 
English  literature  as  a  thing  of  the  past  or  imposed  that 
illusion  upon  our  schools,  with  design  to  prove  that  this 
particular  glory  of  our  birth  and  state  is  a  dead  posses- 
sion of  a  decadent  race.  My  whole  argument  is  rather 
that  they  have  set  up  this  illusion,  and  industriously, 
because  they  could  not  help  it;  because  the  illusion  is  in 
them:  because  this  lovely  and  living  art  which  they 
can  never  practise  nor  even  see  as  an  art,  to  them  is, 
has  been,  must  be  for  ever,  a  dead  science — a  hortus 
siccus;  to  be  tabulated,  not  to  be  planted  or  watered. 

But  I  do  say  that  when  they  impose  that  halluci- 
nation upon  the  schools  of  English  in  our  universities, 
whether  they  impose  it  deliberately  or  not,  the  effect  is 
the  same.  And  I  do  say  it  is  in  a  high  degree  dis- 
creditable that  English  scholars,  hypnotised  (we  must 
suppose)  by  contemplating  the  mere  mountain  of 
German  false  doctrine,  have  consigned  to  it  alike  in 
what  they  neglected  and  what  they  attempted. 

Have  it  how  you  will,  it  disgraces  somebody  that  an 
undergraduate  of  this  university,  from  the  sixth  form 
of  one  of  our  best  reputed  public  schools,  coming  to 
me  the  other  day  in  his  desire  to  know  how  English 
should  be  written  (he  wanted  ardently  to  know  this 
though,  as  he  put  the  matter,  "it  will  be  no  good  for 
me  in  the  Classical  Tripos")— that  this  boy  should 
confess  to  me  that  in  all  his  schooldays  he  had  never 
been  set  to  write  one  English  essay,  never  taught  to 
arrange  two  English  sentences  together. 


I  have  no  blame  for  our  enemies,  as  we  must  now 
call  them.     It  is  our  fault  that  we  treat  our  beautiful, 


314  Studies  in  Literature 

breathing  language  as  a  dead  thing.  On  all  that  side 
of  the  study  which  allowed  them  scope  they  have  taken 
infinite  pains,  while  the  immensely  more  delicate,  more 
significant,  more  difficult  side — difficult  to  us,  im- 
possible to  them — we  have  let  go  by  default.  Is  it  any 
wonder,  then,  that  their  general  hallucination  of  culture 
has  spread  with  a  deeper  infection  of  self-conceit,  of  self- 
deceit,  over  a  study  in  which  we  have  accepted  them 
for  taskmasters  whom  nature  forbade  to  be  more  than 
hewers  of  wood  for  us  and  drawers  of  water? 

I  remember  coming  once — but  cannot  remember 
where — upon  an  ingenious  theory  that  for  a  period  of 
time  in  what  we  call  the  Dark  Ages,  everyone  in  Europe 
was  more  or  less  mad.  At  the  time  that  seemed  to  me 
a  cheerfully  extravagant  hypothesis,  though  it  had  the 
merit  of  illuminating  quite  a  considerable  number  of 
facts  the  causes  of  which  historians  had  left  obscure. 
But  in  our  day  we  are  obliged  to  lay  account  with  some 
explanation  not  very  far  short  of  this,  seeing  that  the 
people  of  central  Europe  are  at  this  very  moment 
claiming — and,  it  seems,  as  one  man — to  be  apostles 
of  a  culture  which  the  surrounding  nations  can  only 
accept  after  a  confession  of  insanity.  Either  we  or  they 
must  be  mad  just  now,  and  there  can  be  no  third  way 
about  it. 

I  daresay  you  read  in  your  Times  yesterday  of  a  per- 
formance of  Twelfth  Night  given  in  the  Old  Theatre  at 
Leipzig  on  October  2Oth  with  a  special  prologue  written 
by  Ernst  Hardt  and  put  into  the  mouth  of  the  Fool, 
who  appeared  in  front  of  the  curtain  and  thus  delivered 
himself — I  quote  the  English  translation : 

Gentles,  in  very  sooth  I  do  appear 

A  fool  in  semblance !     And  behind  the  curtain, 


Patriotism  in  English  Literature      315 

Where  now  my  world  is  built  for  your  delight, 

I  shall  be  truly — I  can  promise  you — 

From  my  heart's  depth  and  by  my  body's  fashion 

A  fool  indeed!     But  here,  and  in  these  times, 

In  front  of  you,  how  can  I  ?     Thorough-baked 

I  stand  as  solemn  as  a  whole  meal  loaf. 

My  master,  the  great  poet,  who  behind 

This  curtain  built  his  world,  and  therewith  too 

Innumerous  other  worlds  as  marvellous — 

Ye1  know  him  well,  for  near  as  man  can  climb 

To  godhead,  he  won  godhead  by  his  works — 

Now  this  same  poet  hath  commanded  me 

In  solemn  earnest  to  declare  you  this: 

Ye  unto  him  have  been  until  today 

His  second  home;  his  first  and  native  home 

Was  England;  but  this  England  of  the  present 

Is  so  contrarious  in  her  acts  and  feelings, 

Yea,  so  abhorr'd  of  his  pure  majesty 

And  the  proud  spirit  of  his  free-born  being, 

That  he  doth  find  himself  quite  homeless  there. 

A  fugitive  he  seeks  his  second  home, 

This  Germany,  that  loves  him  most  of  all, 

To  whom  before  all  others  he  gives  thanks, 

And  says :     Thou  wonderful  and  noble  land, 

Remain  thou  Shakespeare's  one  and  only  home, 

So  that  he  wander  not,  uncomprehended, 

Without  a  shelter  in  the  barren  world! 

VI 

Let  us  not  deceive  ourselves.  The  man  who  wrote 
that,  meant  it :  and  the  man  who  spoke  that,  meant  it. 
If  I  can  read  honest  conviction  in  verse,  honest  con- 
viction is  there.  These  men  do  honestly  believe  our 
Shakespeare — Shakespeare  nostras,  as  Ben  Jonson  af- 

1  "Ye  shall  be  as  gods!" 


316  Studies  in  Literature 

fectionately  termed  him,  whose  language  they  cannot 
speak,  cannot  write,  can  but  imperfectly  understand 
(for  those  who  can  neither  speak  nor  write  in  a  language 
cannot  understand  it  perfectly) ,  our  Shakespeare's  spirit 
— has  migrated  to  a  nation  whose  exploits  it  benevo- 
lently watches  in  the  sack  of  Lou  vain,  the  bestialities 
of  Aerschot,  the  shelling  of  Rheims  cathedral.  These 
men  believe  it  no  less  thoroughly  than  they  believe 
that  a  telegram  is  all  the  better  for  being  forged  so 
that  the  forgery  advantage  them.  Do  not  be  surprised. 
As  I  warned  you  in  certain  lectures  on  Macbeth,  a 
generation  that  has  lived  through  the  consequences  of 
the  Ems  telegram  and  dabbled  with  a  German  pro- 
fessorial philosophy,  which  whether  for  the  purpose  or 
not  does  in  fact  excuse  cheating  at  cards,  cannot  main- 
tain that  the  mirage  imposed  upon  Macbeth  by  the 
witches,  the  dream  of  winning  all  things  by  substituting 
evil  for  good,  has  lost  its  power  to  hallucinate  the 
intellect,  even  the  strong  intellect. 

So  let  us  not  blame  these  men,  but  ourselves,  who 
tamely  suffered  this  imposture  to  grow.  They  could 
not  understand,  or  understood  only  that  they  stood 
to  profit.  We  had  the  birthright  of  understanding  as 
well  as  the  assurance  that  by  allowing  our  intelligence 
to  be  enslaved  we  stood  only  to  lose. 


VII 


There  is  only  one  way,  as  we  see  now,  of  exorcising 
such  a  devil  when  he  has  been  allowed  to  swell  to  full 
growth.  The  task  then  passes  to  the  young — to  the 
sword  in  the  hands  of  the  young — and  they  will  lance 
this  swollen  tumour.  But  at  what  a  cost  of  lives  that 


Patriotism  in  English  Literature      317 

might  be  building  the  next  generation,  and  living  and 
seeing  good  days — lost  to  how  many  through  that 
default  of  ours ! 

Yes,  it  is  good  that  the  young  have  the  salvation  of 
this  race  in  hand  just  now,  and  not  our  professors  and 
lecturers.  But  when  does  ever  a  nation  live,  to  whom 
its  language  is  no  longer  a  living  thing?  To  the  care 
of  these  professors  and  lecturers  our  language  with  its 
tradition  of  glorious  energy  was  entrusted,  to  be  treated 
at  least  as  a  living  thing. 

But  it  is  ill  for  a  country,  Gentlemen — I  fear  we 
must  acknowledge  it — when  her  destiny  passes  into  the 
guidance  of  professors.  That  lesson  (if  I  mistake  not) 
is  going  to  be  very  painfully  learnt  by  Germany  in  the 
course  of  this  war;  and  it  will  be  learnt  less  painfully 
by  us  only  because  our  pedants  have  earned  disregard 
by  choosing  to  be  abject — a  doubly  negative  success. 
If  our  teachers  of  English  had  only — would  only,  even 
now — treat  our  mother  tongue  as  a  living  tongue,  our 
pride  in  it  as  a  pride  of  practice,  our  use  of  it  as  a  quick 
and  perfectible  art !  How  much  can  they  yet  do  with 
their  knowledge  if  they  will  repent  and  understand  and 
become  if  not  as  little  children  then  at  least  as  men  of 
the  world ! 

As  it  is,  the  pricking  of  the  bubble  of  arrogance 
is  left  to  the  clean  instincts  of  our  youn^  men.  I 
seem  now  to  read  the  prophecy  of  this  in  two  scenes, 
which  suffer  me  to  recall  as  they  stand  out  now,  bitten 
sharply  on  my  memory — the  one  of  Oxford,  the  other 
of  Cambridge. 

First  then  I  recall  a  morning  scene  in  Oxford  in  the 
early  spring  of  1912:  the  day  bright,  with  a  touch  of 
frost,  the  air  alive  with  the  spirit  of  youth  borne  back — 
how  poignantly !— to  the  heart  of  a  passer-by,  revisiting 


3i 8  Studies  in  Literature 

the  familiar  streets  after  many  years.  Under  instruc- 
tions I  had  posted  myself  at  the  corner  of  the  Turl 
where  it  debouches  into  the  High.  Nor  had  I  long  to 
wait.  Punctual  as  the  many  clocks  competed  in 
striking  nine,  by  Carfax,  around  the  end  of  St.  Aldates 
swung  the  head  of  a  column  of  artillery — the  O.U.T.C. 
returning  from  morning  manoeuvres,  out  Radley  way. 
They  wheeled  by  Carfax  into  the  High  and  came  at  a 
trot  down  that  street  of  memories. 

Time  like  an  ever-rolling  stream 
Bears  all  his  sons  away 

doubtless :  but  for  the  moment  at  Oxford,  all  has  past, 
everything  even  to  the  morning  sunshine  these  tall  boys 
commanded,  for  behind  them  they  rattled  the  British 
guns.  A  sight  to  make  the  heart  leap !  But  the  heart 
in  its  exultation  cried  out,  "If  it  must  be,  well.  .  .  . 
Yet  not  in  our  time,  O  Lord!" 

And  again,  but  the  date  is  a  year  later — I  see  a  cavalry 
troop  of  the  C.U.O.T.C.  clattering  home  over  the 
bridge  by  Magdalene  in  a  drizzle  that  at  the  shut  of 
evening — her  "gradual  dusky  veil " — made  their  lighter 
Cambridge  grey  all  but  un distinguishable;  these,  also, 
taking  charge  of  the  road,  calling  to  one  another,  as 
they  wheeled  by  St.  John's  as  if  all  Cambridge  belonged 
to  them — as  now  in  retrospection  one  sees  that  it  did. 
For  these  also  were  in  their  careless  confident  way 
preparing  themselves. 

They  are  gone.  They  have  taken  their  cheerfulness 
out  of  Cambridge:  and  have  left  us  to  an  empty  uni- 
versity, to  dull  streets,  the  short  days,  the  long  nights. 
And  we  who,  by  age  or  for  other  causes,  must  stay 
behind,  must  needs  question  our  heavy  thoughts. 


Patriotism  in  English  Literature      319 
VIII 

Let  me  tell  you — or  remind  you — of  this,  for  a  true 
history  and  a  parable.  In  the  year  1870,  in  the  little 
village  of  Arbois  in  France  and  in  a  cottage  close  by  the 
bridge  that  crosses  the  Cuisance  river,  there  abode 
a  small  half -paralyzed  man,  working  at  his  books  to  a 
word  which  he  constantly  repeated — Labor  emus.  For 
his  school  in  Paris  was  closed  and  he  had  been  sent  out 
of  the  city  as  an  "idle  mouth ;'  and  indeed  he  was 
clearly  unfit  to  carry  arms.  "But  sometimes,"  says 
his  biographer,  "when  he  was  sitting  quietly  with  his 
wife  and  daughter,  the  town-crier's  trumpet  would 
sound :  and  forgetting  all  else,  he  must  run  out  of  doors, 
mix  with  the  groups  standing  on  the  bridge,  listen  to 
the  latest  news  of  disaster  and  creep  like  a  dumb  hurt 
animal  back  to  his  room,"  where  the  portrait  of  his 
father  an  ex-sergeant  of  Napoleon's  3d  Regiment  of 
the  Line — "the  brave  amongst  the  brave" — hung  to 
reproach  him.  "Shall  we  not  cry,  'Happy  are  the 
dead'?"  wrote  this  paralytic  man  to  one  friend;  and 
to  another,  "How  fortunate  you  are  to  be  young  and 
strong !  why  cannot  I  begin  a  new  life  of  study  and  work ! 
Unhappy  France,  dear  country,  if  I  could  only  assist 
in  raising  thee  from  thy  disasters!" 

Now  that  man  swore — in  the  depth  of  national  defeat 
in  the  anguish  of  a  brain  active  while  the  body  was  laid 
impotent — to  raise  France  again  to  her  rank  among  the 
nations  and  by  work  of  pure  beneficence.  He  would 
never  forgive  Germany:  but  he — a  man  warned  of  his 
end — would  live  to  build  this  monument,  for  the  glory 
of  France,  to  shame  by  its  nobility  that  vulgar  ex- 
crescence raised  by  Germany  over  the  Rhnie.  You 
may  read  it  all  in  his  Life;  how  the  vow  was  taken,  how 


320  Studies  in  Literature 

pursued,  how  achieved.  I,  who  quote  this  vow  and  its 
accomplishment,  saw  the  wreaths  piled  five-and-twenty 
years  later  by  all  Europe — prouder  trophies  for  a 
cathedral  than  stands  of  captured  colours — on  the  grave 
of  Pasteur. 

"But  that  which  put  glory  of  grace  into  all  that  he 
did, "  says  Bunyan  of  Greatheart,  "was  that  he  did  it  of 
pure  love  for  his  Country." 


INDEX 


Acland,  Sir  Henry,  260 

Adoniram,  2 

Alcuin,  15 

Allen,  Robert,  215,  217 

Ancient  Mariner,  The,  220  et  seq. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  3,  183,  190-191, 

195,  196,  232  et  seq. 
Atalanta  in  Calydon,  263 
Avignon,  17 

Bacon,  Francis,  163 

Ballads,  23  et  seq. 

Beauty  and  the  Beast,  13 

Bede,  15 

Bentley,  Dr.  Richard,  56 

Beowulf,  299 

Besant,  Sir  Walter,  274,  283 

Blake,  William,  77,  113 

Blunt,  Wilfrid  (quoted),  296 

Bossuet,  59 

Bowles,  William  Lisle,  216 

Brandes,  Dr.  George,  82,  94 

Bridges,  Robert,  61 

Bridgman,  Sir  Orlando,  151 

Brome,  Alexander,  90 

Brooke,  Christopher,  104 

Brooke,  Samuel,  104 

Brooke,  Stopford,  299 

Brooks,  W.  T.,  152 

Brown,  Thomas  Edward,  196 

Browne,  Sir  Thomas,  12 

Browning,  Robert,  58,   125,   173, 

190-1,234,243,244 
Bunyan,  John,  294,  320 
Burne-Jones,  Sir  Edward,  262 
Burns,  Robert,  265 
Burton,  Richard,  267 
Byron,     George     Noel     Gordon, 

Lord,  194,  271 

Campbell,  James  Dykes,  213,  216, 
217 


Campion,  Thomas,  60,  61,  72 

Carew,  Thomas,  97 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  236 

Gary,    Lucius     (Lord    Falkland), 

97 

Cassiterides,  The,  2 
Champeaux,  William  of,  18 
Chaucer,  18,  21,  79,  121,   194,  285 
Christabel,  222 
Churchill,  Charles,  52 
Clarendon,  Edward  Hyde,  Earl  of, 

97 

Cleveland,  John,  55 

Cloister  and  the  Hearth,   The,  287 

Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  37,  no, 

212  et  seq.,  298 
Collins,  William,  75,  88 
Common  Prayer,  Book  of,  70 
Conington,  John,  52,  54 
Cory,  William  (Johnston),  192 
Cowper,  William,  56,  68 
Crabbe,  George,  56-57 
Cramb,  Professor  J.  A.,  296 
Crashaw,  Richard,  163-166 
Cupid  and  Psyche,  13 

Daniel,  Samuel,  72 

Dante,  121 

Davies,  Sir  John,  155-156 

Denham,  Sir  John,  88 

De  Quincey,  Thomas,  213,  298 

De  Tabley,  J.  B.  Leicester  Warren, 

Lord,  255 

Dixon,  Richard  Watson,  255 
Dobell,  Bertram,  152 
Dobson,  Austin,  69 
Dodington,  George  Bubb,  297 
Donne,  Henry,  99.  IO° 
Donne,  John,  96  et  seq.,  130,  131, 

Do'riet/Charles  Sackville,  Earl  of 
67 


321 


322 


Index 


Doughty,  Charles  M.,  207 
Drury,  Sir  Robert,  105,  106 
Dryden,  John,  56,  97,   no,  242, 

298-299 
Dunbar,  William,  19,  20 

Earle,  John,  150-151 
Ecclesiasticus,  42,  119 
"  Eliot,  George, "  282 
Ellesmere,  Thomas  Egerton,  Earl 

of,  103 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  14 
Essays  in  Criticism,  235 
Etherege,  Sir  George,  67 
Evans,  Mary,  215-8 

Ferrar,  Nicholas,  135 
Fletcher,  Giles,  156 
Fletcher,  John,  45 
Fletcher,  Phineas,  156 
Froude,  James  Anthony,  234 

Garnett,  Dr.  Richard,  227 
Gautier,  Theophile,  91 
Gibbon,  Edward,  59 
Gilbert,  Sir  William  S.,  59 
Gladstone,  W.  E.,  51,  59,  70 
Godolphin,  Sidney,  97 
Goldsmith,  Oliver,  56 
Gorky,  Maxim,  82 
Gosse,  Edmund,  251  et  seq. 
Gray,  Thomas,  238 
Grierson,  Professor  H.  J.  C.,  97 
Grimm,  James,  23,  25 
Grosart,  Dr.  A.  B.,  136,  152 
Gummere,  Dr.  F.  B.,  27,  28,  37 

Habington,  William,  157-158 

Hall,  Bishop,  55 

Hamerton,  Philip  Gilbert,  310 

Hardt,  Ernst,  314 

Hardy,  Thomas,  82,  189  et  seq. 

Harvey,  Christopher,  158-159, 163 

Harvey,  Gabriel,  72 

Hazlitt,  William,  169,  222 

Henley,  W.  E.,  161 

Herbert    of    Cherbury,    Edward, 

Lord,  131,  132 
Herbert,  George,  81,  114,   131  et 

seq.,  139,  140,  143,  163,  164 
Herbert,  Sidney,  132 
Herder,  23 
Herodotus,  5 
Herrick,  Robert,  60 
Hoccleve,  Thomas,  48 


Homer,  5,  89 

Hood,  Thomas,  136 

Horace,  51  et  seq.,  101,  299-300 

Horn,  sailing  ships,  7 

Houghton,  R.  Monckton  Milnes, 

Lord,  261 
Housman,   A.    E.    (quoted),   303, 

304 
Hugo,  Victor,  255-256 

Ictis,  Island  of,  2 

Job,  Book  of,  119 

Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  45,  97,  no, 

"3,  258,  288,  290 
Jonson,  Ben,  60,  79,  97,  317 
Joubert,  231 
Jowett,  Dr.  Benjamin,  249,  259, 

266 

Jusserand,  J.  J.,  17,213 
Juvenal,  52,  53 

Keats,  John,  194,  267 
Ker,  Professor  W.  P.,  28 
King,  Bishop  Henry,  97,  156-157 
Kipling,  Rudyard,  37 
Kittredge,  Professor,  24,  26 
Kubla  Khan,  222,  223 

Lamb,  Charles,  59,  170,  214,  219, 

226,  255 
Landor,   Walter  Savage,   69,   95, 

i  255>A26i 

Lang,  Andrew,  13,  101 
Langland,  William,  43 
Lebanon,  levy  of,  2 
Lincoln,  Abraham,  292 
Litany,  The,  17 
London  Bridge,  1 8 
Longinus,  93 
Louyain,  15 
Lucian,  43 
Lydgate,  John,  48 

Macaulay,     Thomas     Babington, 

Lord,  236 

Macdonald,  George  (quoted),  128 
"Maartens,  Maarten,"  267 
Maeterlinck,  Maurice,  82,  150 
Martin,  Sir  Theodore,  52,  71 
Marvell,  Andrew,  63,  66 
Mazzini,  Giuseppe,  259 
Meredith,  George,   79,    119,    167, 

168  et  seq.,  192,  205,  263,  265, 

270 


Index 


323 


Milton,  John,  48,  62,  67,  74, 
77,  78,  121,  147,  203,  238,  241, 
299 

Moliere,  194 

Montaigne,  194 

More,  Sir  George,  104 

Morris,  William,  191,  195,  262 

Muller,  Max,  312 

Myers,  Lindo,  254 

Newman,  John  Henry,  Cardinal, 

59.  306 
Nut  Browne  Mayde,  The,  307 

Oldham,  John,  56 
Oliphant,  Laurence,  58 

Paley,  William,  127 

Pascal,  1 6 

Pasteur,  Louis,  319-320 

Pater,  Walter,  301-302 

Paul,  Herbert,  233,  235 

Peele,  George,  60 

Percy,  Bishop,  38,  47 

Pilgrim  Fathers,  The,  4, 

Plato,  116,  120,  209,  290-293 

Poems  and  Ballads,  265 

Poole,  Thomas,  218 

Pope,  Alexander,  52,  56,  59,  77, 

88  et  seq.,  no 
Porter,  Endymion,  97 
Powell,  F.  York,  152 
Praed,  W.  M.,  69 
Prior,  Matthew,  67 
Procter,     Bryan    Waller     (Barry 

Cornwall),  255 
Pythagoras,  120 

Quarles,  Francis,  159,  161,  163 
Quia  Amore  Langueo,  160 

Rabelais,  16,  59 
Ralegh,  Sir  Walter,  296 
Raper,  R.  W.,  249,  266 
Reade,  Charles,  274  et  seq. 
Redesdale,      Algernon      Bertram 

Freeman- Mitford,  Lord,  252 
Remigius,  18 
Richbprough  oysters,  i 
Ritchie,  Lady,  261 
Roads,  15-17 
Rochester,  John  Wilmot,  Earl  of, 

I6l 

Roman  Colonists  in  Britain,  8 
Rossetti,  Christina,  264 


Rossetti,  Dante  Gabriel,  247,  262, 

Routh,  Dr.,  of  Magdalen,  278, 
279 

Sahara,  The,  12 

St.  Aldwyn,  Michael  Edward 
Hicks-Beach,  Viscount,  258 

Saintsbury,  George,  235,  239,  246 

Sappho,  n,  93 

Schlegel,  A.  W.,  25 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  37 

Sedley,  Sir  Charles,  67 

Shakespeare,  13,  77,  113,  172,  178, 
203,249,297,317 

Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  77, 194, 226, 
249 

Shenstone,  William,  47 

Sherbrooke,  Robert  (Lowe),  Vis- 
count, 278 

Sheridan,  Richard  Brinsley,  79 

Simonides,  256 

Skeat,  Professor  W.  W.,  121 

Smith,  Goldwin,  280 

South,  Dr.  Robert,  147-149 

Sou  they,  Robert,  217 

Spenser,  Edmund,  48,  72,  78,  79, 
185,  266 

Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  65,  197 

Stubbs,  Bishop  William,  262 

Swift,  Jonathan,  52 

Swinburne,  Algernon  Charles,  191, 
246  et  seq.,  282 

Tarshish,  navy  of,  i 

Tennyson,  Lord,  6,  71,  190,  234, 

Thackeray,  W.  M.,  59,  71 
Thompson,  Francis,  92,  160,  191, 

194 

Thucydides,  93 
Tolstoy,  209 
Traherne,  Thomas,  114,  122,  124, 

128,  151  et  seq. 
Tyrrell,  Professor  R.  Y.,  64 

Universities,  the  early,  18 

Vaughan,  Henry,  114,  123,  J38  et 

seq.,  152 

Vaughan,  Thomas,  139 
Vere,  Aubrey  de,  52 
Virgil,  93,  220 
Voltaire,  59 


324 


Index 


Walton,  Isaak,  96  et  seq.,  133    et 

seq.,  304 

Watson,  Sir  William,  240,  243 
Watts,  Dr.  Isaac,  73 
Watts-Dunton,  Theodore,  257,  269 

et  seq. 

Wells,  Charles  Jeremiah,  255 
Whitman,  Walt,  184,  271 
Worde,  Wynkyn  de,  43 


Wordsworth,  Dorothy,  2 1 8  et  seq. 

Wordsworth,  William,  59,  82,  114, 
119,  129,  146,  147,  150,  196,  218 
et  seq.,  239,  242,  243-244 

Wotton,  Sir  Henry,  60,  96 

Wyatt,  Sir  Thomas,  44,  60 

Yeats,  William  Butler,  191,  194 
Young,  Sir  George,  254 


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